HORNED OWLS, ETC.: BURROWING OWL 
329 
during bad weather. In winter as many as twenty have been found 
in one burrow with abundant provisions. In one case, “forty-three 
mice . were scattered along the run to their common apartment” 
(in Fisher, 1893, p. 191). 
The Burrowing Owls are common all over the Pecos Valley at 
long distances from water, as well as near streams. There they breed 
in prairie dog holes and mark their breeding burrows by an accumula¬ 
tion of odd material scattered about the entrance. At one nest 
entrance near Roswell, Mr. Bailey noted a great abundance of dry 
horse manure, some corn cobs, charcoal, tufts of cow hair, bits of 
hide pieces of bone, a child’s woolen mitten, a piece of calico, and 
other rags, shore lark and other bird feathers, and bits of insects 
(MS) Part of this material was evidently the remains of food. The 
rest may have been collected on the principle that Rock Wrens appar¬ 
ently mark their nest hole in a cliff full of holes, as a matter of con¬ 
venience; or, if prairie dogs ever enter each other’s burrows, the door 
plate may be to prevent unpleasant mistakes. The smooth brown 
ejected pellets are easily picked up around the burrows, and if examined 
by experts give the menu of this useful little Owl. 
In the region about Mesilla Park, Professor Merrill reported that 
the Owls were found mostly in the grass belt on the mesa with prairie 
dogs, but he discovered two families and a colony living by themselves, 
away from prairie dog towns. One family nested in a hole in the river 
k an k_the young were flying before the middle of July—and the 
other family nested in a gopher hole along a ditch bank. The colony, 
which contained about two dozen, was in the high bank of an arroyo 
about three miles out on the mesa (MS). 
In the summer of 1924, Mr. Ligon found the Owls common in 
practically all prairie-dog infested areas in the Pecos Valley and 
eastern and northeastern sections of the State. They were especially 
numerous in the White Lakes section northeast of Roswell, in Quay 
County south of Tucumcari, and near Albert. In Quay County, 
where the prairie dogs had been poisoned for five years, the Owls had 
collected in great numbers in the small town where the remaining dogs 
had congregated (MS). 
In the stomach of ohe specimen killed east of Las Cruces, where the 
Owls were numerous in prairie dog towns, Professor Merrill found the 
remains of many grasshoppers, mixed with the fruit of the Tesajilla 
cactus. On top of the mound were parts of grasshoppers, cactus seeds, 
and parts of the fig-eating, wood-boring, and burying beetles. Near 
Carlsbad in a prairie dog town on the Bolles Ranch, where the Owls 
were common, Mr. Bailey found that their pellets contained a marked 
quantity of fragments of the large green beetles, which were eating 
ripe plums in the orchard. 
