The Screech Owls 
not be amiss to speculate. In the first 
place, the bird is less tuneful—or less 
noisy—and so less in evidence in the 
West. The notes, too, are different, and, 
possibly, less terrifying, though terror 
with birds must be more a matter of 
remembered experience than of tone qual¬ 
ity and suggestion in itself. Instead of 
that “tremulous quaver, exquisitely 
mournful and sweet,” but also very 
gruesome, as it proceeds from the throat 
of a famished, bird-hunting Screech Owl 
in zero weather, we have in the California 
bird duller tones and a song phrase made 
up in its early numbers of separate and 
easily distinguishable notes. But also, 
chiefly, I 
think, the 
Screech 
Owls of the 
Pacific 
Coast, hav¬ 
ing in win¬ 
ter a more 
abundant 
and con¬ 
stant supply 
of their favorite food,—mice, beetles, frogs, and even, occasionally, fish- 
are not often driven to attack other birds. Tyler records an instance where 
a Screech Owl was chased by Mockingbirds; and, in general, it may be 
said that almost any bird will join in the pursuit of any night-prowling 
Owl. Even that most impeccable mouser, the Barn Owl, is sometimes 
set upon, in sport. But the key to the woods has been handed over to 
the Pygmy Owl, and him the small birds fear as they do not Otus asio 
bendirei. 
It is only at nesting time that we can acquire anything more than 
the merest scrap of information about our Screech Owls. Early in April, 
or, rarely, in later March, some natural cavity in a tree, whether live oak, 
cottonwood, or sycamore, or else some deserted Woodpecker’s nest, 
is selected for a home. Instances are found where the birds used old 
rat nests, and they are suspected of occupying old Magpie nests as well. 
No lining material is required, and the three or four rounded white eggs 
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SCREECH OWL 
Taken in 
San Diego 
Photo by 
D. R. Dickey 
c* L. Huey 
1106 
