1908.] 



BIKDS. 



373 



high Banksian pine on the hills soutliTrest of the post. The place was 

 again visited April 1 and the female found on the nest. It was left 

 for further developments, but later in the day the tree was cut down 

 by an Indian, and the nest and contents, two fresh eggs, destroyed. 

 On April 17 I found another nest near the banks of the Liard, a few 

 miles distant from the post. It was in the crotch of a large aspen 

 poplar, 50 feet from the ground, and held a single egg. It was 

 visited again on April 22. and the two eggs (see PI. XXIII, fig. 1) 

 and the male bird secured. The eggs measure, respectively, 5^.2 by 

 17. and 53.1 by 15.7. This bird, like all those taken during the 

 spring, was very light colored and typical of suharcticus^ proving 

 ihe resident bird to be of this form. Its stomach contained the fur 

 of varying hares {Lepus amevicanus) and the remains of several 

 large water beetles {Dytiscus dauricus). H. AY. Jones took a 

 fine light bird near Fort Providence April 30, which had eaten 

 several similar beetles, and another which I trapped May 11 had 

 taken seven beetles of the same species. One seen flying low over 

 the river on the evening of ^lay 16 was probably in pursuit of the 

 same prey. On June 18, while descending the Mackenzie, I saw 

 a very light-colored female with her brood of half-grown young in 

 a nest on the face of the cliff at Wolverene Eock, 100 miles below 

 Fort Xorman. The old bird escaped, but I collected one of the young- 

 ones, all of which were very light colored. At Fort McPherson I 

 lieard the notes of a great horned owl on the evening of July 7, and 

 saw one of the birds on the following day. While ascending the 

 Mackenzie I heard one above Fort Xorman July 18, and another 

 near Xahanni River July 23. H. W. Jones writes me that great 

 horned owls were very numerous at Fort Simpson during the autumn 

 of 1901:, but that they were scarce after the last of December. 



Richardson described a specimen taken at Fort Chipewyan ; « 

 thirty years later Ross recorded the species as wintering in the Mac- 

 kenzie Valley north to the Arctic Circle, and as having been col- 

 lected at Fort Simpson.^ Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway state that 

 Ross found it abundant about Great Slave Lake, especially in the 

 * marshy country about Fort Resolution, where it preyed on shrews 

 and voles.'^ The bird catalogue of the Xational Museum shows that 

 skins were received from Fort Good Hope. Fort Liard. Fort Halkett, 

 Big Island, and Fort Resolution, one taken at the last place by 

 Kennicott being still in the collection. Russell took one at Salt River, 

 10 miles below Fort Smith, June 28, 1893.^ 



Fauna Boreali-Americana, II, p. 84, 1831. 

 . ^Xat. Hist. Rev., II (second ser.), p. 277, 1862. 

 (■ Hist. N. A. Birds, Land Birds, III, p. 66, 1874. 

 ^ Expl. in Far North, p. 262, 1898. 



