Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/157

Rh from one side of the mouth. The indigested mass forms a roundish ball or pellet in the stomach, which the bird vomits up. These pellets or castings indicate what enormous feeders the owls are. One which I took out of the stomach of a little screech-owl was as big as a walnut, and made up of hair and bones, and had in it the skulls of six mice!

While adopting Dr. Coues's specific nomenclature, let us follow John Cassin's distribution of these birds. To aid both memory and judgment, the following scheme is offered:

1. Among the Striginœ we find no large owls, but here are found the typical birds of the family. Here is seen in its highest perfection of form that owlish peculiarity of the face known as the facial disk; that circle of bristle-like, radiating feathers, which helps the big round eyes to their cattish stare. The eyes, however, of the birds in this group, are not so large as are found in some species in the other groups; but the bills of the Striginœ are somewhat longer. Here we find the white or barn owl of the authors, which is in fact the world's traditional owl. Its portrait is given in Fig. 1, which is Strix flammea (Linn.), the barn-owl of Europe. This and the American barn-owl were long regarded as the same species; but Coues considers it a geographical variety, and, restoring Audubon's name, makes a sub-species of it, thus: S. flammea, var. Americana (Fig. 2). South of a certain latitude the bird is abundant on both sides of our continent, chiefly near the sea. It is sometimes found in New York and New Jersey, where it breeds in trees with the barest apology for a nest, as the eggs are laid upon the débris or cast-up pellets of the bird, which crumble and make a softish but filthy mess. Dr. Newberry states that he saw this bird occupying holes in the perpendicular cliffs on the shores of San Pablo Bay. Wood says the European barn-owl lives in trees and crevices of old buildings, laying its white, rough-surfaced eggs upon a soft layer of its own castings. So intensely pungent is the odor of the nest that it is with difficulty the hand can be washed free of it after meddling with the eggs. The young are described as curious little puffs of white down. The European species is often found feeding a brood of young, while it is hatching another set of eggs. The bird is often tamed, and sometimes