280 
BURROWING OWL. 
DESCRIPTION OF NESTS AND EGGS. 
'Nests, placed in holes in the ground which are, however, not excavated by the Owls. The eggs are placed on any loose 
material that chances to be at the bottom of the hole. 
Eggs, four to seven in number, rather spherical in form, pure white in color, with thesurface very smooth. Dimensions 
from POOxl-22 to 1-lOx 1-25. 
HABITS. 
It may appear strange to many of my readers, to find birds so long supposed to be 
exclusively confined to the western prairies as the Burrowing Owls, given among the birds 
of Eastern North America and, a few years ago, no ornithologist, even, would have dreamed 
of adding them to our fauna; yet, as in the affairs of humanity, so it is in bird-life, for, a 
change has come and, behold, we have the Burrowing Owls on our list. They are appar¬ 
ently firmly established there, for, by some chance, to mortals unknown, and at some date 
in the past which no one has recorded, a colony of these Owls came to Western Florida. 
Here they evidently found dwarf palmettos as congenial to their tastes for shade as prairie 
grass, and the holes made by the reptilian gophers appear to have suited their wants, as 
breeding places, as well as those excavated by mammalian gophers, while the apparent par¬ 
adox caused by the local confusion of names, did not puzzle their brains half as much as 
it has some naturalists, although they had gophers of quite different habits from those to 
which they had been accustomed, dwelling among them, that had received the decidedly 
batracliian name of salamander. Truly, names among animals in Florida, have been badly 
mixed but, as before mentioned, this made but little difference to the Owls and they set¬ 
tled in the Land of Flowers, quite near the spot where the valiant De Soto landed, so long 
ago, on the Bahia Espiritu Santo now known by the less pompous appellation of Tampa 
Bay. 
I have never seen the Burro wing, Owls in Florida but others have been more fortunate, 
and Mr. Ridgway told the story of their discovery there by Mr. Moor some years ago. 
He has also decided that the colony which squatted there, claiming the land by preemption, 
perhaps, unless some Spanish hidalgo presents a prior claim, are entitled to a varietal 
rank; and this may be true, for such matters depend entirely upon just how one may re¬ 
gard species and varieties, for although ornithologists are quite apt to agree in the main, 
they will differ about some points, and I, for one, have never considered it advisable to 
adopt the trinominal system for reasons which I have given in the preceding pages. 
The Burrowing Owls also claim a place among our Northern birds, for my friend, Mr. 
Ruthven Deane, states that a specimen was taken on the marshes at Newburyport, Mass¬ 
achusetts, in the spring of 1875; but this was an undoubted straggler, none ever having 
been seen here before or since. 
As remarked, I have never seen a living specimen of the Burrowing Owl but Mr, 
Ridgway who has met with them in abundance, informs me that they always breed in de¬ 
serted holes made by the prairie dog, or gopher, and that the statements made by travel¬ 
ers, that the Owls, gophers, and rattlensakes dwell together in harmony, has no foundation 
in fact. The Owls choose abandoned burrows which the rattlesnakes only enter, if they 
do at all, as unwelcomed intruders, perhaps allured there by the prospect of a good meal 
of young Owls. 
