251 
1870. 
July 1 
1871. 
Oc t/ • 20. 
1874. 
July 2. 
“ 7. 
Nov, 20. 
Asi© accipitrinus, 
Shot four specimens on Muskegat, all that we saw 
there. Tv^o were young birds, the other two adults 
bleached to a remarkably light color. They frequented 
no particular part of the Island but ranged all over it 
passing the noon-day hours among the bayberry bushes or’ 
rank grass and coming forth early in the afternoon 
©specially when the weather vras cloudy, and continuing 
their marauding through the night. We found in their 
stomachs field mice and remains of Terns. The latter 
seemed to furnish their chief food and more than once 
we caught them in the act of eating these birds. They 
were very dainty about this, taking only the flesh from 
wings, and tail untouch¬ 
ed and attached to the cleanly picked sternum. In a 
ben of rank grass covering about an acre we found as 
many as two hundred of these skeletonized Terns. The 
Owls when abroad were invariably followed by hundreds of 
erns which they seemed to regard with perfect indiffer¬ 
ence. Poising in the midst of them with rapid vibra¬ 
ting wings, at a height of ton or fifteen feet, they 
would drop, with the quickness of thought on some unfor¬ 
tunate mouse, the frightened and enraged Terns meanwhile 
dashing wildly about the Owl and, after he had alighted 
plunging down vnthin a few inches of his head. We fre¬ 
quently heard their uproar at all hours of the darknesi 
night. When started in the day-time the Owls usually 
rose out of gunshot and with hanging legs and clumsy 
flight proceeded a few hundred yards and settled again 
One thus flushed rose high in the air and sailed about’in 
circles about over my head, uttering an incessant harsh 
when I left the place he would 
invariably alight again. We killed several by marking 
the spor where they settled, and running to it at the 
top of our speed when the Owl seemed to become confused 
an squatting, would often lie until wo got within a few 
loot of him. On such an occasion the cloud of Terns 
overing over marked the exact spot v;hore the Owl lay 
besides distracting his attention {Muskegat Island,Mass.). 
Shot two, starting them from beach grass near the 
shore (Marston’s Mills, Mass.). 
. hawking about the commons at noon-day in the 
ThSi! occasionally sailed In circles like 
a Hav/k (Nantucket). 
Jesse warren who has just spent five days on Muske- 
gat showed me two of these Owls which he had shot there, 
tangle of low bushes and beach grass on the 
sandhills at the mouth of Ipswich River one of those 
wLr J ^ it slightly in the wing, 
when it alighted after flying about fiftyv yards; \p- 
^ crouching menancingly.^ 
T IS species is one of the most beautiful of the Owls 
when alive or freshly killed, the rich yet subdued plu- 
