The Pampas and Andes: A Thousand Miles' Walk Across South America

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

On these immense plains of grass it lives in company with the bizcacha. The habits of this bird are said to be the same as those of the species that inhabits the holes of the marmots upon the prairies of western North America. But this is not strictly correct, for one writer says of the northern species, “we have no evidence that the owl and marmot habitually resort to one burrow;” and Say remarks that “they were either common, though unfriendly, residents of the same habitation, or that our owl was the sole occupant of a burrow acquired by the right of conquest.” In this respect they differ from their South American relatives, who live in perfect harmony with the bizcacha, and during the day, while the latter is sleeping, a pair of these birds stand a few inches within the main entrance of the burrow, and at the first strange sound, be it near or distant, they leave their station, and remain outside the hole, or upon the mound which forms the roof of the domicile. When man approaches, both birds mount above him in the air, and keep uttering their alarm note, with irides dilated, until he passes, when they quietly settle down in the grass, or return to their former place.

While on the pampas, I did not observe these birds taking prey during the daytime, but at sunset the bizcachas and owls leave their holes, and search for food, the young of the former playing about the birds as they alighted near them. They do not associate in companies, there being but one pair to each hole, and at night do not stray far from their homes.

In describing the North American burrowing owl, a writer says that the species “suddenly disappears in the early part of August,” and that “the species is strictly diurnal.”

The Athene cunicularia has not these habits. It does not disappear during any part of the year, and it is both nocturnal and diurnal, for though I did not observe it preying by day on the pampas, I noticed that it fed at all hours of the day and night on the north shore of the Plata, in the Banda Oriental.

At longitude 66° west our caravan struck the great saline desert that stretches to the Andes, and during fourteen days’ travel on foot I did not see a dozen of these birds; but while residing outside the town of San Juan, at the eastern base of the Andes, I had an opportunity to watch their habits in a locality differing materially from the pampas.

The months of September and October are the conjugal ones. During the middle of the former month I obtained a male bird with a broken wing. It lived in confinement two days, refusing to eat, and died from the effects of the wound. A few days later a boy brought me a female owl, with five eggs, that had been taken from her nest, five feet from the mouth of a burrow that wound among the roots of a tree.

She was fierce in her cage, and fought with wings and beak, uttering all the while a shrill, prolonged note, resembling the sound produced by drawing a file across the teeth of a saw. I supplied her with eleven full-grown mice, which were devoured during the first thirty-six hours of confinement.

I endeavored to ascertain if this species burrows its own habitation, but my observations of eight months failed to impress me with the belief that it does. I have conversed with intelligent persons who have been familiar with their habits, and never did I meet one that believed this bird to be its own workman. It places a small nest of feathers at the end of some occupied or deserted burrow, as necessity demands, in which are deposited from two to five white eggs, which are nearly spherical in form, and are a little larger than the eggs of the domestic pigeon.

In the Banda Oriental, where the country is as fine, and the favorite food of the owl more plentifully distributed than upon the pampas, this bird is not common in comparison with the numbers found in the latter locality. The reason is obvious. The bizcacha does not exist in the Banda Oriental, and consequently these birds have a poor chance for finding habitations. On the pampas, where thousands upon thousands of bizcachas undermine the soil, there, in their true locality, the traveller finds thousands of owls. Again, along the bases of the Andes, where the bizcacha is rarely met with, we find only a few pairs. Does the hole, from which my bird was taken, appear to be the work of a bird or quadruped? The several works that I have been able to consult do not, in one instance, give personal observations relative to the burrowing propensities of this owl; from which fact, it will be inferred that it never has been caught in the act of burrowing.

We continued our journey while the sun left in the western heavens beautiful clouds of purple and gray as souvenirs of his company through the bright, warm day.