THE GREAT HORNED OWL 
223 
GREAT HORNED OWL. 
With “ horns ” laid back in anger. 
But let us give even the Horned Owl its just 
due. Mr. O. E. Niles, of Ohio, once found in a 
nest of this bird “several full-grown Norway 
rats with their skulls opened and brains removed,” 
and on the ground under the tree which contained 
the nest he found “the bodies of one hundred and 
thirteen rats, most of them full grown!” Now, 
in the course of a year, would not one hundred 
and thirteen Norway rats consume and destroy 
enough grain to feed one hundred and ten head 
of poultry? 
This is the summary of the contents of 127 
stomachs of Great Horned Owls examined by 
the Biological Survey: 31 contained poultry or 
game-birds; 8 contained other birds; 13 con- 
tained mice; 65 contained other mammals; 1 
contained a fish; 1 contained a scorpion; 10 
contained insects, and 17 contained nothing. 
The bird-food represented the following: 21 
domestic birds, 11 song-birds, 3 ruffed grouse, 
2 quail, I pinnated grouse, 1 pigeon, 1 rail, 1 
wild duck, 1 Cooper’s hawk, and 2 unknown. 
The mammals found were as follows: 46 mice 
and rats, 32 rabbits and hares, 7 shrews, 5 squir- 
rels, 3 chipmunks, 4 pocket-gophers, 2 skunks, 1 
weasel and 1 bat. 
Beyond question, the debit balance against 
this bird is heavy, and justifies its destruction, 
wherever found; but at the same time, it goes 
against the grain to kill a bird which destroys 
so many rats. 
The Great Horned Owl, or Hoot-Owl, as it is 
frequently called, is a bird of dignified and im- 
posing appearance. Its big, round-topped horns 
of feathers are singularly like cats’ ears in shape, 
and when with these are seen the fiercely-glaring 
eyes of yellow and black, the half-yellow face 
and fluffy white feathers on the throat, the whole 
head of this bird is singularly like that of a Ben- 
gal tiger. The body plumage is a complex mot- 
tling and barring of black and brown, dull yellow 
and white, impossible to describe successfully. 
But this bird can always be recognized by its 
large size, cat’s-ear “horns,” and the fine, black 
horizontal bars across its breast-feathers. From 
wing to wing, across its upper breast there is an 
assemblage of heavy splashes of black. 
The eastern Great Horned Owl is the type 
species on which are based the Western, Arctic, 
Dusky and Pacific Horned Owls, which in com- 
Photographed by E. R. Warren. 
YOUNG GREAT HORNED OWLS. 
