LONG-EARED OWL. 
105 
the front one backwards, black, edged with rusty 
yellow ; irides, vivid yellow ; inside of the circle of the 
face, white, outside or cheeks, rusty ; at the internal 
angle of the eye, a streak of black ; bill, blackish horn 
colour; forehead and crown, deep brown, speckled with 
minute points of white and pale rusty ; outside circle 
of the face, black, finely marked with small curving 
spots of white ; back and wings, dark brown, sprinkled 
and spotted with white, pale ferruginous and dusky; 
primaries, barred with brownish yellow and dusky, 
darkening towards the tips ; secondaries, more finely 
barred and powdered with white and dusky ; tail, 
rounded at the end, of the same length with the wings, 
beautifully barred and marbled with dull white and pale 
rusty, on a dark brown ground; throat and breast, 
clouded with rusty, cream, black and white ; belly, 
beautifully streaked with large arrow-heads of black; 
legs and thighs, plain pale rusty, feathered to the claws, 
which are blue black, large, and sharp ; inside of the 
wing, brownish yellow, with a large spot of black at 
the root of the primaries. This was a female. Of the 
male I cannot speak precisely ; though, from the num- 
bers of these birds which I have examined in the fall, 
when it is difficult to ascertain their sex, I conjecture 
that they differ very little in colour. 
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 old, 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. Thus we see how unvarying are the manners of 
