May, 1918 FROM FIELD AND STUDY 125 



The Tragical Addition of a New Bird to the Campus List. — A dead bird or any part 

 of one found in the woods or fields always suggests a story. It is true that the story, 

 even when the bird can be identified, usually tells nothing more than this: That the spe- 

 cies represented has occurred in or near the locality where its remains were found. This 

 is not much, but it is something, especially when the bird is rare or hitherto unknown in 

 that locality. 



It is always interesting when the finding of a dead bird is attended by circum- 

 stances which suggest, in addition to the fact of the bird's occurrence where found, a real 

 story, with action and human appeal and perhaps even a plot. Such a story is suggested 

 by some remains of a Short-eared Owl, found in the Berkeley Hills and brought to the 

 Museum, on two different dates, by two different people, and in two different manners 

 and forms. 



On the night of January 29, 1918, a Short-eared Owl was perched on a rock which 

 crops from the steep gravelly north wall near the head of one of the two small tributary 

 canyons lying between the mouths of Strawberry and Claremont canyons. This slope 

 can be seen easily by anyone who walks up Haste Street and looks straight ahead of him. 

 The axis of the canyon, if extended west, would almost coincide with Haste Street. The 

 half-gravelly, half-rocky slope, or ledge, shows up plainly, for it is the only dirt-colored 

 area in a canyon otherwise more or less intensely green with vegetation. 



What time of night it was, or how long the owl had scanned the moonlit canyon 

 from the high rock, we cannot say, but the bird's vigil was suddenly interrupted by a 

 dark form swiftly bearing down on silent wings. We can imagine that the Short-eared 

 Owl quickly crouched, as startled birds do before springing into the air. But it had bare- 

 ly spread its wings before the dark form had pounced upon it and crunched it into a 

 gravelly crevice of the ledge. It fought upward with its talons, cat-like; but, if it was a 

 cat, its antagonist was a tiger, with talons that were longer and stronger. For a few mo- 

 ments there was a lively tussle and a great beating of soft wings on rocks; feathers were 

 torn from the smaller bird and strewn over the ground; then the talons of the Horned 

 Owl closed on the breast of the Short-eared, at once piercing the vitals and squeezing out 

 the breath, — and the struggle was over. 



The Horned Owl, bearing the body of its victim in its claws, flew across the can- 

 yon, probably in a southerly direction, toward the grove of eucalyptus trees back of the 

 State School for the Deaf and Blind. Here it engaged in a cannibalistic orgy, devouring 

 the breast and other portions of its slain relative, and not caring how many of the bones 

 and feathers it swallowed with the flesh. 



The next morning (January 30), the Horned Owl, still gorged, and made stupid by 

 sunlight, was sleeping in the foliage of a live oak or eucalyptus, near the scene of its 

 feast, when a man (or a boy) with a shot-gun passed. The owl flushed, and the man (or 

 boy) took a wing shot at it. Though wounded, its momentum carried it some distance 

 from the gunner, who hunted for the body awhile and then gave up his search. 



That is the story as reconstructed from the evidence brought to hand at the Mu- 

 seum. The reader, after hearing the evidence, is at liberty to judge whether the story 

 seems, at least in its main essentials, reasonable. 



On the afternoon of January 30, a member of the Museum staff, while strolling 

 around the small canyon already described, spied some feathers near the rock already de- 

 scribed, and, clambering up, collected all of the larger and some of the smaller ones. 

 Among these were five primaries (three from the left, two from the right, wing), and 

 one secondary (from the left wing). What would amount to a good handful of small 

 downy breast feathers he left scattered, as found, over the ledge. Some of these were 

 blood-spattered, or torn out with bits of skin adhering to their roots. The quills of two 

 larger feathers were crushed and split. At the Museum he compared the feathers with 

 feathers on study specimens and thus proved they had come from a Short-eared Owl 

 (Asio flammeus) . 



These feathers constituted the first installment of Short-eared Owl remains to ar- 

 rive at the Museum. The second installment arrived five days later, in the stomach of a 

 Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus pacificus). On February 4, Miss Elizabeth Van E. Fer- 

 guson, while walking in "the Berkeley Hills near the Blind Asylum", found a dead 

 Horned Owl, which she retrieved and brought to the Museum. Dr. Bryant, who examined 

 the stomach, found that certain dark wet masses therefrom, when dried and fluffed out, 



