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THE LITTLE OR ACADIAN OWL. 
Ylula Acadica, Gmel. 
PLATE XXXIII. — Male aht> Female. 
This lively and beautiful little Owl is found in almost every portion of 
the United States. I have observed it breeding in Louisiana, Kentucky, and 
along our Eastern States, as far as Maine, where, however, it becomes scarce, 
being, as it were, replaced by the Tengmalm Owl, which I have seen as far 
south as Bangor, in Maine. It is rare in the lower parts of South Caro- 
lina', where indeed my friend Bachman never observed it. 
The Little Owl is known in Massachusetts by the name of the “ Saw- 
whet/’ the sound of its love-notes bearing a great resemblance to the noise 
pi'oduced by filing the teeth of a large saw. These notes, when coming, as 
they frequently do, from the interior of a deep forest, produce a very pecu- 
liar effect on the traveller, who, not being aware of their real nature, expects, 
as he advances on his route, to meet with shelter under a saw-mill at no 
great distance. Until I shot the bird in the act,. I had myself been more 
than once deceived in this manner. On one particular occasion, while walk- 
ing near my saw-mill in Pennsylvania, to see that all was right there, I was 
much astonished to hear these sounds issuing from the interior of the grist- 
mill. The door having been locked, I had to go to my miller’s house close 
by, to inquire if any one was at work in it. He, however, informed me that 
the sounds I had heard were merely the notes of what he called the Screech 
Owl, whose nest was close by, in a hollow tree, deserted by the Wood Ducks, 
a pair of which had been breeding there for several years in succession. 
I have been thus particular in relating the above circumstance, from a 
desire to know if the European Little Owl ( Strix passerina ) emits the same 
curious sounds. The latter is said by several authors of eminence to lay 
only two white eggs, while I know, from my own observation, that ours has 
three, four, or five, and even sometimes six. The eggs are glossy-white, 
and of a short elliptical form, approaching to globular. It often takes the 
old nest of the Common Crow to breed in, and also lays in the hollows of 
trees a few feet above the ground. A nest of our Little Owl, which I found 
near the city of Natchez, was placed in the broken stump of a small decayed 
tree, not more than four feet from the ground. I was attracted to it by the 
snoring notes of the young, which sounded as if at a considerable elevation ; 
and I was so misled by them that, had not my dog raised himself to smell at 
