Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/603



This lively and beautiful little Owl is found in almost every portion of the United States. I have observed it breeding in Louisiana, Ken- tucky, and along our Eastern States, as far as Maine, where, however, it becomes scarce, being, as it were, replaced by the Tengmalm Owl, which I have seen as far south as Bangor in Maine. It is rare in the lower parts of South Carolina, where indeed my friend Bachman never ob- served it.

The Little Owl is known in Massachusetts by the name of the " Saw- whet," the sound of its love-notes bearing a great resemblance to the noise produced by filing the teeth of a large saw. These notes, when coming, as they frequently do, from the interior of a deep forest, produce a very peculiar effect on the traveller, who, not being aware of their real nature, expects, as he advances on his route, to meet with shelter under a saw- mill at no great distance. Until I shot the bird in the act, I had myself been more than once deceived in this manner. On one particular occa- sion, while walking near my saw-mill in Pennsylvania, to see that all was right there, I was much astonished to hear these sounds issuing from the interior of the grist-mill. The door having been locked, I had to go to my miller's house close by, to inquire if any one was at work in it. He, however, informed me that the sounds I had heard were merely the notes of what he called the Screech Owl, whose nest was close by, in a hollow tree, deserted by the Wood Ducks, a pair of which had been breeding there for several years in succession.

I have been thus particular in relating the above circumstance, from a desire to know if the European Little Owl (Strix passerina), emits the same curious sounds. The latter is said by several authors of eminence to lay only two white eggs, while I know, from my own observation, that ours has three, four, or five, and even sometimes six. The eggs are glossy-white, and of a short elliptical form, approaching to globular. It often takes the old nest of the Common Crow to breed in, and also lavs in the hollows of trees a few feet above the ground