Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE OWLS

American Screech Owls

Of the eighty or more forms recognized about twenty are confined to the New World and the remainder to the Old World, the two groups being very distinct. The most important North American species is the common Screech Owl (M. asio), which in a number of well-marked geographical races is spread over practically the entire continent except at the far North. The forms inhabiting the eastern United States exhibit in a marked degree the dichromatism or gray and rufous phases already mentioned, which have no relation to sex, age, or season, while the western races are monochromatic, the plumage presenting in all individuals essentially the same character and corresponding to the grayish phase of the eastern races. In the typical form (M. asio), which ranges over the eastern United States and British provinces west to the edge of the Great Plains, the normal plumage is generally brownish gray above, streaked with black and finely mottled with ochraceous buff, and white, finely streaked and barred with black and rufous on a white ground below. In the rufous phase the upper parts are bright rufous finely streaked with black, while the lower parts are white with the feathers centrally streaked with black and barred with rufous.

The length is between eight and ten inches, the female, as usual among Owls, being the larger. It is not uncommon to find young birds of both phases in the same nest, even when the parents are of the same color, and there is a tendency for one or the other phase to predominate in certain localities; in the Mississippi Valley, for instance, the rufous plumage appears to prevail, while near the Atlantic coast the reverse seems to be the case.

The Screech Owl, or as it is sometimes called according to the plumage, the Red or Gray Owl, is strictly nocturnal in its habits, frequenting open wooded districts, old apple orchards, or outbuildings, and spending the daytime in a hollow tree, a dense thicket, or a dark corner of a barn.

It is rarely seen during the daytime, unless its retreat is discovered by some prying Blue Jay or other small bird, when it is mobbed unmercifully, and although it maybe relatively abundant, its presence, from its retiring disposition, is often unsuspected. But, says Chapman,”how differently they appear when the western sky fades and their day begins! With ear-tufts erected and his great, round eyes opened to the utmost, he is the picture of alertness.”

Their weird, melancholy call, which has given rise to not a little superstition and dread among ignorant people, is a tremulous, wailing whistle or doleful moan; it is often heard in the early evening about dwellings.

Their food consists very largely of mice and other small rodents, as well as insects and an occasional small bird or frog; rarely, and only when pushed by the extreme pangs of hunger, are they known to attack poultry. Of the 255 stomachs examined by Dr. Fisher, only one contained poultry; 38, other birds; 91, mice; 100, insects, while the remainder were divided among lizards, fish, crawfish, spiders, earthworms, etc., or were empty.

 

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