The third I had the advantage of seeing alive: one whose downiness indicated youth, was brought me on the 24th of the same month. Its imbecility by day was shewn by the mode of its capture. It was in a small tree on Bluefields Mountain, when a boy, by shaking the tree, caused it to fall to the ground, where it lay helpless. It was cross all the time I had it, snapping the beak loudly, and striking out as endeavouring to seize the hand; uttering now and then a shrill wail, most plaintive to hear. The globular head, and round full eyes, over which the nictitating membrane was constantly being drawn, gave the living bird an odd appearance. On dissecting it I found in the stomach remains of mice and elytra of small beetles.
From these instances we can pretty well infer the food of the present species to consist largely of shelled insects, as well as lizards and small mammalia. For a while I knew not what to make of a statement of Robinson’s, that in his male he found “nothing but some particles of maize;” as also that in another, with “the remains of scarabs,” there was “some guinea-corn, and maize.” But I am informed that this Owl is known to enter dove-cotes, and devour the young pigeons; the grain, therefore, in these specimens was probably in the stomachs of their prey, and remained in the Owls after the prey had been dissolved, because the stomach of a rapacious bird refuses to digest vegetable food. It would probably have been cast up, if the birds had survived.
I know not whether this is the species that Mr. Hill means when he says, in “Notes of a Year,” published in the Companion to the Jamaica Almanack, for 1840,—“After sunset [in evenings in August] the Brown Owl, seated on the dead limb of a tree in some savanna, makes little circuits of about thirty feet diameter, and returns to perch again. I should judge that it is darting at Coleopterous insects, occasional fire-flies being seen wandering at about ten or a dozen feet above the highest elevation at which the Owls are flying.”
The flesh of this species is soft and flabby in texture, and pale in colour.
SCREECH OWL.[7]
Strix pratincola.
| Strix flammea, | Wilson. |
| Strix pratincola, | Bonap. |
| Strix Americana, | Aud. pl. 171. |
[7] Length 17 inches, expanse 46, tail 5¾, flexure 13½, rictus 2, tarsus 3¼, middle toe 1³⁄₈, claw 1.
Though Wilson has introduced this bird into his American Ornithology, and described it apparently from native specimens, his very meagre notes of its manners are those of its European representative, the bird being very rare in the United States. In Jamaica it is not at all uncommon, though little seen by day. I have been accustomed to see one nearly every evening, emerge from some lofty woods on a hill just above Bluefields, soon after sunset, and fly heavily over the pasture and house, uttering a querulous cry, kep, kep, kep, in a sharp tone, without intermission. Sometimes it was followed by another, and both would betake themselves to a large cotton-tree at the border of the opposite woods, where they would alight on the topmost boughs, and after sitting quiet awhile, resume their flight and their cry together. At other times, one or two are heard, and dimly seen by the light of the moon, slowly flying over the pasture in a large circle. Its motion is noiseless in itself, but almost always accompanied by this monotonous cry; it usually flies high, but remarkably slowly. I had been informed that it sometimes screams shrilly when flying, but this I had not heard, until I had been familiar with the bird in this way, for more than a year. But one night as I lay awake at Content, in St. Elizabeth’s, I heard a harsh screech twice repeated, which I at once suspected to be the voice of the White Owl, and presently this was confirmed by the kep, kep, of one which was evidently flying round the house, and continued for some time within hearing. And one evening, about three months afterwards, just as the west horizon had faded from its glowing gold to a dull ruddy hue, I heard a Screech Owl flying from the hill as usual over the pasture; when it was overhead, but at a height of perhaps three hundred feet, it suddenly intermitted the kep, kep, by a loud scream; then kep, kep again, and soon another scream, and by and by another, as it slowly flew along.