Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE OWLS

Owl Nests

he nests of Owls are usually rather rude affairs, placed in hollow trunks or limbs of trees, old abandoned or neglected buildings, the discarded nests of other large birds, rocky shelves or caverns, occasionally on the ground, and by some species in underground burrows. The eggs are usually nearly spherical in shape and white, — either pure white or slightly tinted with yellowish or blue.

They vary in number from two in some species to as many as ten or twelve in others, the usual number being three or four. Ordinarily Owls nest very early in the season, often when the ground is still covered with snow, and as a result incubation commences as soon as the first egg is deposited, it being a common occurrence to find both fresh and heavily incubated eggs in the same nest, or newly hatched and half-fledged young.

They are usually close sitters, both sexes taking part in incubating the eggs, and not infrequently they defend their treasures with much spirit. The young are perfectly helpless when hatched and are covered with a soft down; they remain for a considerable time in the nest.

Notes.—While the vocal apparatus is fairly well developed in Owls, their notes are usually anything but attractive or pleasing, being a loud”hoot,”a howling or screeching, or a weird imitation of human laughter; in a few cases, however, the voice is low and muffled, or even somewhat clear and musical.
Color Phases.—Among the Owls, as in certain other groups of birds, the female is usually the larger, but as will be shown later, there are some exceptions. In all cases, however, the sexes are alike in plumage, and in this connection it may be mentioned that two phases of plumage often occur irrespective of age or sex, namely, a”gray”phase in which the dominant color is brownish gray, and a”red”phase in which a rusty red predominates.

The Owls, which are embraced in some thirty genera and considerably more than three hundred species and subspecies, are unquestionably a very old group, since a dozen or more fossil forms have been described from the lower, middle, and upper Tertiary deposits of various parts of the world.

As already pointed out, they are a very compact and homogeneous assemblage, so much so in fact that it is difficult to satisfactorily divide them into smaller groups. As at present understood, the suborder contains but a single family (Strigida), which it is possible to divide into two well-marked subfamilies, — the Striginm, or Bam Owls, and the Bubonina, or Horned Owls and their allies.

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