122 T?IE CONDOR Vol. X like "quap". He repeated this note several times and finally dropped to the ground about a hundred feet away from me, flapping his wings and calling a high squealing note as though badly hurt. Later on I watched this performance every time I approached the nest, and have since seen it in other individuals of this species. It is one of the most peculiar and novel methods of feigning wound- ed that I have seen in any bird. The bird circles at a height of about fifty feet, then drops straight down close to the intruder, until within two or three feet of the ground, then sails low over the grass and brush in the opposite direction from the nest, until a hundred feet or more away when he lights on the ground facing the intruder, squealing as though. in great pain, and with xvings widespread and flapping. If followed he will wait till one gets within about twenty-five feet, then slowly and carefully folds his wings one at a time, rises and sails a little farther away and repeats the wing flapping and squealing. If one is not xvatching him when he first drops to the ground, he frequently calls attention to himself by flapping his wings against his sides oi- breast as he drops, producing a sudden, loud and startling uoise that is very surprising in a bird whose flight is ordinarily perfectly silent. This performance com- pels the attention so strongly that it seems that it must be quite successful in luring away a coyote or other natural enemy that might venture too close to the nest or young. When I first saw this performance - on the evening in question it immedi- ? *' ' ately gave me a clue to the location of the nest; so I went in the opposite direction from that in which the bird ?, . tried to lead me, and soon flushed his mate from the nest. As soon as I Iml found the nest. the first bird, I presume the male, ceased his attempts to lead me away, and he and his mate leig. 38. YOUNG SHoRT-?aREI> OWL A?OuT circled low about my head, clicking 22 DAYS OLD; PHOTo TAKEN NEAR CHOU- , TEAU, ?iOi?-?ANA, JUNE 28, 1912 their bills and frequently calling "quap" and occasionally prolonging this note to a scream, shirred downward, like that of many of the hawks, but of a curious hoarse quality. The nest was flat ou the ground, underneath and sur- rounded by cinquefoil bushes, and contained nine voung. There really was no nest but merely a bunch of young birds huddled to?'ether, and if there ever had been a nest, the young had t[amped it out so thoroughly that it was now unrecog- nizable as such. The young were in various stages of development, the youngest beiug downy and blind while the oldest was well feathered, with yellow eyes wide opened, and showing fear of me by clicking his bill and hissing in much the same manner as a cat hisses at a dog.-The young were so close together that I had to separate them to count them. I now noticed a curious difference in the parent birds. The female. at least the one that had been at the nest xvith the young, when I found it, had a higher pitched, more squeaky and less harsh voice than the male, when she called quap. She was also a little more heavily streaked on the breast than was her mate. Consequently I had no difficulty in distinguishing the two birds, and I al- ways found the male on guard in the willow bush or the cottonwood tree, and the
