HORNED OWLS, ETC.: ARIZONA SPOTTED OWL 331 
of McKittrick Canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas just over the New 
Mexico line (Bailey).—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —In caves, in crevices in canyon walls, in cavities of trees, or in a fork near 
the trunk; made of sticks, twigs, and dry inner bark, lined with dry grass and a few 
feathers. Eggs : 2 to 4, white. 
Courtesy of The Auk, photograph by J. Stokley Elgon 
Fig. 53. Arizona Spotted Owl 
The old mother on the edge of the nest. Surely she will not let the 
beautiful eggs get cold 
General Habits. —The significance of the spotting of this Owl is 
suggested by Mr. Donald R. Dickey who found an old one with young 
in a cliff in California. He found her once “dozing in a small oak near 
the nest/’ and says, “Her protective coloration, noticeable at all times, 
was particularly so as she sat in the oak. . . Whether she clung to 
the cliff, or sat close against the mottled fir trunk, or in the spotted 
light and shade of the oak foliage, her harmonization was startlingly 
complete (1914, p. 196). 
In the Huachuca Mountains, Arizona, Mr. Swarth found the 
Spotted Owl resident above 6,500 feet in the dark thickets of quaking 
aspen and also in the canyons usually not far from water (1904, p. 8). 
In New Mexico Mr. Ligon has found them in narrow, well-shaded 
canyons in pairs, generally sitting in small, dense white or Douglas 
fir trees, as they are “entirely nocturnal.” The food of those he examined 
consisted almost entirely of the large blue wood rats common in the 
region (1926b, p. 422). 
