July, 1917 125 



THE WINTER MIGRATION OF 1916-17 IN THE NORTHWEST 



By J. HOOPER BOWLES 



WITH TWO PHOTOS 



THE WINTER of 1916-17 will long be remembered by the ornithologists of 

 the northwest at least, as breaking all previous records for the migration 

 of numerous varieties of northern land birds. I wish to be particularly 

 explicit as to the term land birds as, for some reason, we have had practically 

 no migration of northern sea birds. This is all in very marked contrast to the 

 previous winter of 1915-16, when we experienced the largest migration of 

 northern sea birds that I have ever seen, but practically no migration at all of 

 northern land birds. The winter of 1915-16 was the coldest and most severe 

 that I have known during a residence of twenty years in the northwest, ice and 

 snow remaining on the ground for weeks at a time. The present winter of 

 1916-17, on the contrary, has been rather a mild one, there having been only a 

 little ice and but a few light falls of snow that have lasted only three or four 

 days at the most. 



Returning to the subject in hand, the first migrants of importance to be 

 noted were the Horned Owls, which began putting in their appearance early in 

 the fall of 1916. It is difficult to tell just when this began, because of the pos- 

 sibility of the resident birds being taken. However, as the season advanced 

 specimens were taken in almost all possible gradations of plumage, although 

 I saw none that I should consider perfectly typical of true Bubo virginianus 

 subarcticus. Very close approaches to this form were taken, and from these 

 gradations led into extremely dark examples of B. v. saturatus, in fact very 

 much darker than any that I have ever seen before. As I have no means of 

 positively identifying the specimens it is impossible to say just what, or how 

 many, forms may be represented in the dozens of birds that I have examined, 

 but I expect to have this all cleared up at a later date. 



At first these migrants were regarded only as what might be usually ex- 

 pected here, but soon they became so numerous as to be a veritable pest. Poul- 

 try farms of all kinds were raided without mercy, one example that I shall give 

 in some detail being the gamebird farm belonging to Dr. G. D. Shaver, of Ta- 

 coma. The captive wild ducks seemed to have the most attraction, and of fifty- 

 three that the doctor had at the beginning of last fall, only twenty-six are left 

 at the present writing — and the owls are hooting there now. The doctor shot 

 a number of them, but killed more by poisoning the carcasses left uneaten. 

 These usually had the heads eaten off, after which the owls would drag them 

 in under some log or roll of wire netting where they were well hidden. It is 

 interesting to note that sometimes the owls would not return to their kill for a 

 period of time ranging from one to five or six days. In two instances two owls 

 were poisoned in one night by eating the same bird, and one owl carried a full- 

 grown Mallard hen twenty feet up into a fir tree where both birds were found 

 dead about a week later, the owl firmly clutching the poisoned body of its prey. 



I examined a great many stomachs of these owls, the contents of which 

 showed about an equal number of mammals and large birds. Nothing smaller 

 than a Green-winged Teal was found. A number of stomachs contained the re- 

 mains of hens, curiously enough all of them being Barred Plymouth Rock. 

 This is decidedly strange, because such breeds as the White Leghorn outnum- 



