The American Barn Owl 
has been saddled with a most unmelodious voice. She does not know it, 
poor thing, and fills the night, therefore, with screeches which seem the 
very soul of petulance or hate. This challenge note of the Barn Owl is 
harsh beyond all expression, a snarling churr , ground out between clenched 
teeth. I do not know where Lewis Carroll thinks he got the name for 
his impossible animal, the “ Snark but I suggest that it came subcon¬ 
sciously from the Barn Owl’s cry, snarrk. By this sound we know that 
the Barn Owl is abroad, 
and by the sustained 
succession of these 
sounds, we judge that 
the Barn Owl spends 
more time a-wing than 
do any of the Strigine 
owls. Aluco 1 is a tire¬ 
less quester, the buzzard 
of the night, pausing 
only, and that very fre¬ 
quently, when its prey is 
spotted on the ground. 
The function of the 
snarrk cry is not exactly 
known, although the 
birds do hunt more or 
less in pairs, and may 
wish to keep in touch, 
however distantly. It is 
more probable, however, 
that snark is a joy cry, 
and expresses the bird’s 
delight in the prospects 
of the chase, or its 
exultation over life lived 
under the tipsy beams of the swelling moon. 
In the springtime this joy of life, or else the passion of love, urges 
the Barn Owl to more extended effort. Fluttering his wings softly, with 
head uplifted, and as it were, dancing in midair, the bird says crick crick 
crick crick crick crick crick, in a sort of ecstatic chant. Or again, the 
note is doubled, witta witta witta, in breathless cadence, while the bird 
drifts slowly about with no other thought, apparently, than to maintain 
Taken near Escondido 
Photo by J. B. Dixon 
NEST AND EGGS OF AMERICAN BARN OWL 
1 Formerly so called. 
1073 
