LONG-EARED OWL. 
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adhering, and lined with fresh grass and sheep wool, but without feathers. 
The eggs are usually four, nearly equally rounded at both ends, thin-shelled, 
smooth, when newly deposited pure white, with a slight blush, which is no 
longer observable when they have been for some time sitten upon ; their 
average length an inch and a half, their greatest breadth an inch and three- 
sixteenths. I found eggs of this bird on the 15th of April, and again on the 
25th of June, which induces me to believe that it rears two broods in the 
season in the State of Pennsylvania, as it probably does also to the westward. 
Wilson relates the following instance of its indifference as to the place 
selected for its eggs. “ About six or seven miles below Philadelphia, and 
not far from the Delaware, is a low swamp, thickly covered with trees, and 
inundated during great part of the year. This place is the resort of great 
numbers of the Qua-bird or Night Raven ( Ardea Nycticorax), where they 
build in large companies. On the 25th of April, while wading among the 
dark recesses of this place, observing the habits of these birds, I discovered a 
Long-eared Owl, which had taken possession of one of their nests, and was 
sitting : on mounting to the nest, I found it contained four eggs, and breaking 
one of these, the young appeared almost ready to leave the shell. ' There 
were numbers of the Qua-birds’ nests on the adjoining trees all around, and 
one of them actually on the same tree.” 
When encamped in the woods, I have frequently heard the notes of this 
bird at night. Its cry is prolonged and plaintive, though consisting of not 
more than two or three notes repeated at intervals. 
Dr. Richardson states that it has been found “as far north aslat. 60°, and 
probably exjsts as high as the forests extend. It is plentiful in the woods 
skirting the plains of the Saskatchewan, frequents the coast of Hudson’s Bay 
only in the summer, and retires into the interior in the winter. It resides 
all the year in the United States, and perhaps is not a rare bird in any part 
of North America ; but as it comes seldom abroad in the day, fewer specimens 
are obtained of it than of the other Owls. It preys chiefly on quadrupeds 
of the genus Arvicola, and in summer destroys many beetles. It lays three 
or four roundish white eggs, sometimes on the ground, at other times in the 
deserted nests of other birds in low bushes. Mr. Hutchins says it lays in 
April, and that the young fly in May • and Mr. Drummond found a nest on 
the ground, containing three eggs, on the 5th of July, and killed both the 
birds. On comparing the above mentioned eggs with those of -the English 
Long-eared Owl, the American ones proved to be smaller, measuring only 
an inch and a half in length, and 1.27 inches in breadth ; while the English 
ones measured 1.8 inch in length, and 11 in breadth. The form and colour 
were the same in both.” 
The food of this Owl consists of rats, mice, and other small quadrupeds, 
Vol. I. 21 
