Identifier: birdsnatureinnat03chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds -- North America
Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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an inthe daytime. For that reason they feed at night and seldom molest )ioultry. butlive chiefly on rabbits, mice, insects, and other animals that move in the nighttime. A study of the stomachs of many Iniiidred owls has demonstrated that,by the destruction of mice, they are to be regarded as more useful than other-wise. The owl eats its food, hair, feathers, and all. It is said that its healthactually fails if fed on pure beefsteak. Hair, bones and feathers are formed intopellets and cast up through the mouth. A study of these pellets gives a clue tothe diet of the owl. In the northern states owls nest in February. The eggs ofan owl, usually two to four in number, are unifonnly white and are almost hemi-spherical. In perching, the owl has the power to reflex the outer toe at will, thusgrasping the perch with three toes forward and one backward, or two forwardand two backward, thus giving it a firmer hold. No ear-tufts; general plumage mottled, dusky, grayish-brown, and dull whit- 410
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514 GREAT GRAY OWL. (Scotiaptex ctnerea). 14 Life-size. COPiTRIGHT 10O2, By MFCHO, CHICAGO ish, darker above, lighter below, where the dusky markings are indistinctly longi-tudinal on breast and belly, and transverse on flanks, the whitish impure andwith a fulvous element on the margin of the facial disk, hind neck, wings, tail,etc.; wing-quills and tail indistinctly barred; facial disk about six inches across,dusky gray, with numerous dusky lines imperfectly concentric about each eye;the edge of the disk dark brown and fulvous, and with more white below; theeyes bordered by black on the inner margin; iris yellow; bill pale yellow; feetand toes heavily feathered. One autumn day some thirty years ago Charles Dury, of Cincinnati, was outquail hunting with some farmers boys in Clark County, near South Charleston.While in pursuit of a scattered covey in a dense thicket, he came suddenly upon amonster owl, the like of which he had never seen alive. A quick shot fired full inthe birds face,

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