Note s of 
the Saw- 
whet Owl 
h^/4-fy'^ Z- 
2 / 
hop, hoo- hoo , hoo . hpo. This is the only instance which has 
ever come under my observation of a Bubo hooting very near 
a house or, indeed, anywhere save in deen woods,\ 
Under date of October 11th I noted haaxing in 
Prescott’s Pines, at evening, an ow, ow which seemed familiar 
but which I could not refer to its author. [Gerald Thayer 
tells me that it vms without question the call of a Sa,w-whet 
Owl and I believe that it was the same cry v/hich I used to 
hear in autumn while camping at Moll’s Rock, Lake Umbagog, and 
which my gnides said was made by a Saw-whet^ The Thayers 
(Abbott and ffierald) and I heard it again last evening, indis¬ 
tinctly and mingled with certain other sounds wholly new 
to me. 
We had seated ourselves on the border of a wood road 
which leads through some dense white pines just to the 
northward of the Green Field and had remained there for 
upwards of half-an-hour, abstaining from conversation and 
all movement but "squeaking” every fev/ minutes in the hope 
of attracting something of interest. Meanwhile twilight 
had faded into night and the gloom under the trees had 
become so deep that we could scarce see one another's faces. 
Suddenly vire heard a confused medley of low , slight sounds, 
some of them nasal and whining, others odd little chuckling 
or wheezy noises and ainong them, indistinctly as I have just 
said and given but once, the ow note which Gerald considered 
almost certain evidence that we v/ere listening to a Savif-whet, 
Without question the creature was a bird of some kind for 
