378 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July, 1920 
THE INFANCY OF TWO BARRED OWLS 
DO FLEDGLING OWLS SUBSIST MORE ON BIRDS THAN THEIR ELDERS? OBSER- 
VATIONS ON THIS BROOD WOULD INDICATE THAT SUCH IS THE CASE. . 
I T was on the twenty-ninth of May when 
I discovered the owls. The two young 
were lying in a slight depression on 
pine needles at the base of a huge pine. 
They were about ten or twelve inches in 
length, covered with a soft, thick coat of 
yellowish white down, among which were 
dispersed the large pin feathers of gray 
and brown arranged in bands or bars 
proclaiming them to be barred owls. The 
eyes were black with a steely blue iris 
and the beak was a dirty yellow in color; 
the coloring about the beak and eyes gave 
their flat, human-like faces a spectacled 
appearance. 
When approached, they would snap 
their beaks and in general they would try 
to look quite fierce, but they soon quieted 
down and uttered soft, sharp peeps like 
those of a young dove. The peeps or 
perhaps the loud snappings usually at- 
tracted the mother, but when she saw the 
huge intruder she settled on a branch 
close by and manifested her disapproval 
of the proceedings by loud snaps and pro- 
longed hoots, which always stirred up the 
young into a renewed state of activity. 
As near as could be estimated, the 
young were a week or ten days old, and 
had evidently fallen out of their nest high 
up in the pine. 
Next morning, dragging myself out of 
bed at four, I hurried to the spot which 
was about two miles distant and stationed 
myself very near the young and awaited 
developments. In a little less than a half 
hour the mother came to the young bear- 
ing a bull-head in her talons; besides this 
the night or early morning foragings of 
the mother were rewarded by four small 
birds which were laying on the ground 
close by the young. Seizing the bull-head 
in her claws; the old bird tore it into three 
large pieces and in turn fed them to the 
young. The birds were picked up by the 
mother and given to the young, who 
would grasp them by the head and swal- 
low them whole. After the seemingly 
painful process of swallowing was over, 
the tail feathers of the victim would pro- 
trude from either shU of the mouth in a 
comical fashion, giving 'them the appear- 
ance of spectacled 'p-~a^es with their stiff 
mustaches sticking out from each side 
of the lip. 
After the feeding comedy and the 
mother had taken her leave I walked up 
to them very quietly; unlike the day 
before they let me approach without the 
slightest sign of fear, but when I at- 
tempted to pick them up they snapped 
By NICHOLAS R. CASILLO. Keene. N. H. 
The two. barred owlets 
their beaks and clawed furiously. Here 
I observed that although they clawed and 
grasped, they never made an attempt to 
bite. I even placed my finger under their 
noses and pushed them but this was un- 
heeded. After some trouble I placed them 
on a birch-log before the ready camera, 
but I had to wait pretty nearly an hour 
before they settled and assumed a sat- 
isfactory pose. A few minutes later the 
mother returned with a young rabbit. 
Tearing it to bits, she fed the young and 
also partook herself. 
Three days later I again visited them. 
This short space of time had wrought 
quite a change in the owlets; the perma- 
nent feathers were more prominent, their 
faces had become flatter and in nature 
they were much wilder, making ludicrous 
and awkward attempts to escape when 
I approached. I made particular note of 
this visit because among the many cast- 
ings and litter I found the bodies of one 
chipping sparrow, one song sparrow, two 
Perfect horn Broken Sharpened 
catbirds, and two bluebirds, and, as on 
another occasion, the body of a large bull- 
head partly eaten. From this quota it 
can be safely said that this owl is [some- 
times] destructive to insectivorous and 
useful birds. In no case did I ever find 
the body of a mouse or other rodent 
among the castings. 
The young were now much larger and> 
demanded a large supply of food. 
Two days later I found them feeding 
themselves on a frog and two fledglings. 
The longitudinal bars on their breasts 
could now be easily distinguished among 
the thinning down and some of the wing 
coverts had made their appearance. 
A week later they made their first 
flight, which, of course, was short; they 
would follow their mother from tree to 
tree, but at the end of an owl’s day 
(night) they would return to the old 
roost just before or shortly after sunrise. 
Next day while wandering about the 
vicinity of the roost I was surprised and 
dismayed to find the partly eaten body of 
one young owl lying on the ground, and 
close by was the other, probably killed by 
some prowler. 
RHINOCEROS HORNS 
T HE front horn of the female rhin- 
oceros, in a perfect specimen, is 
long, graceful and slender and it 
is often considerably spatulate (or flat- 
tened) towards the tip. The horn is 
generally thicker and stronger near the 
end than it is some inches below. Such 
a perfect horn is •'seldom seen — it would 
hardly be an exaggeration to say that 
nineteen out of twenty females, at some 
time during their lives, break their horns 
at the waist-like part and lose from six 
inches to a foot and a half of its length. 
The horn thus broken is ground and 
sharpened on stones, and by digging, un- 
til it again becomes pointed, but it is 
now short and stumpy and has lost the 
graceful outline of its original shape. 
The perfect horn of the female white 
rhinoceros is also slender like that of 
the black, but may be distinguished from 
the latter by the base, which is squar- 
ish in front, instead of oval in section 
as with the prehensile lipped variety. 
Amongst this species also an unbroken 
horn is seldom seen, nearly every female 
bears the stumpy type, which denotes a 
former break. 
In one specimen of the white rhin- 
oceros I met with, the posterior horn 
