Description.—Above dark sandy brown, with large oval spots of white and smaller spots and freckles of pale brown; wings and tail dark brown, with broad whitish cross bars; facial disk greyish brown, surrounded by white: beneath white, sides of breast marked with broad bars of brown, which become fainter on the belly; lower belly, thighs, and crissum pure white; tarsi feathered; toes slightly bristled: whole length 10·0 inches, wing 7·5, tail 3·5. Female similar, but rather larger.
Hab. North and South America.
The Burrowing-Owl is abundant everywhere on the pampas of Buenos Ayres and avoids woods, but not districts abounding in scattered trees and bushes. It sees much better than most Owls by day, and never affects concealment nor appears confused by diurnal sounds and the glare of noon. It stares fixedly—“with insolence,” Azara says—at a passer-by, following him with the eyes, the round head turning about as on a pivot. If closely approached it drops its body or bobs in a curious fashion, emitting a brief scream, followed by three abrupt ejaculations; and if made to fly goes only fifteen or twenty yards away, and alights again with face towards the intruder; and no sooner does it alight than it repeats the odd gesture and scream, standing stiff and erect, and appearing beyond measure astonished at the intrusion. By day it flies near the surface with wings continuously flapping, and invariably before alighting glides upwards for some distance and comes down very abruptly. It frequently runs rapidly on the ground, and is incapable of sustaining flight long. Gaucho boys pursue these birds for sport on horseback, taking them after a chase of fifteen or twenty minutes. They live in pairs all the year, and sit by day at the mouth of their burrow or on the Vizcacha’s mound, the two birds so close together as to be almost touching; when alarmed they both fly away, but sometimes the male only, the female diving into the burrow. On the pampas it may be more from necessity than choice that they always sit on the ground, as they are usually seen perched on the summits of bushes where such abound, as in Patagonia.
These are the commonest traits of the Burrowing-Owl in the settled districts, where it is excessively numerous and has become familiar with man; but in the regions hunted over by the Indians it is a scarce bird and has different habits. Shy of approach as a persecuted game fowl, it rises to a considerable height in the air when the approaching traveller is yet far off, and flies often beyond sight before descending again to the earth. This wildness of disposition is, without doubt, due to the active animosity of the pampas-tribes, who have all the ancient wide-spread superstitions regarding the Owl. Sister of the Evil Spirit is one of their names for it; they hunt it to death whenever they can, and when travelling will not stop to rest or encamp on a spot where an Owl has been spied. Where the country is settled by Europeans the bird has dropped its wary habits and become extremely tame. They are tenacious of the spot they live in, and are not easily driven out by cultivation. When the fields are ploughed up they make their kennels on their borders, or at the roadsides, and sit all day perched on the posts of the fences.
Occasionally they are seen preying by day, especially when anything passes near them, offering the chance of an easy capture. I have often amused myself by throwing bits of hard clay near one as it sat beside its kennel; for the bird will immediately give chase, only discovering its mistake when the object is firmly clutched in its talons. When there are young to be fed, they are almost as active by day as by night. On hot November days multitudes of a large species of Scarabæus appear, and the bulky bodies and noisy bungling flights of these beetles invite the Owls to pursuit, and on every side they are seen pursuing, and striking down the beetles, and tumbling upon them in the grass. Owls have a peculiar manner of taking their prey: they grapple it so tightly in their talons that they totter and strive to steady themselves by throwing out their wings, and, sometimes losing their balance, fall prostrate and flutter on the ground. If the animal captured be small they proceed after a while to dispatch it with the beak; if large they usually rise laboriously from the ground and fly to some distance with it, thus giving time for the wounds inflicted by the claws to do their work.
At sunset the Owls begin to hoot; a short followed by a long note is repeated many times with an interval of a second of silence. There is nothing dreary or solemn in this performance; the voice is rather soft and sorrowful, somewhat resembling the lowest notes of the flute in sound. In spring they hoot a great deal, many individuals responding to each other.
In the evening they are often seen hovering at a height of forty feet above the surface, and continuing to do so fully a minute or longer without altering their position. They do not drop the whole distance at once on their prey, but descend vertically, tumbling and fluttering as if wounded, to within ten yards of the earth, and then, after hovering a few seconds more, glide obliquely on to it. They prey on every living creature not too large to be overcome by them. Sometimes when a mouse is caught they tear off the head, tail, and feet, devouring only the body. The hind quarters of toads and frogs are almost invariably rejected; and inasmuch as these are the most fleshy and succulent parts, this is a strange and unaccountable habit. They make an easy conquest of a snake eighteen inches long, and kill it by dealing it blows with the beak, hopping briskly about it all the time, apparently to guard themselves with their wings. They prey largely on the common Coronella anomala, but I have never seen one attacking a venomous species. When they have young many individuals become destructive to poultry, coming about the houses and carrying off the chickens and ducklings by day. In seasons of plenty they destroy far more prey than they can devour; but in severe winters they come, apparently starving, about the houses, and will then stoop to carry off any dead animal food, though old and dried up as a piece of parchment. This I have often seen them do.
Though the Owls are always on familiar terms with the Vizcachas (Lagostomus trichodactylus) and occasionally breed in one of their disused burrows, as a rule they excavate a breeding-place for themselves. The kennel they make is crooked, and varies in length from four to twelve feet. The nest is placed at the extremity, and is composed of wool or dry grass, often exclusively of dry horse-dung. The eggs are usually five in number, white, and nearly spherical; the number, however, varies, and I have frequently found six or seven eggs in a nest. After the female has begun laying the birds continue carrying in dry horse-dung, until the floor of the burrow and a space before it is thickly carpeted with this material. The following spring the loose earth and rubbish is cleared out, for the same hole may serve them two or three years. It is always untidy, but mostly so during the breeding-season, when prey is very [abundant], the floor and ground about the entrance being often littered with excrements, green beetle-shells, pellets of hair and bones, feathers of birds, hind quarters of frogs in all stages of decay, great hairy spiders (Mygale), remains of half-eaten snakes, and other unpleasant creatures that they subsist on. But all this carrion about the little Owl’s disordered house reminds one forcibly of the important part the bird plays in the economy of nature. The young birds ascend to the entrance of the burrow to bask in the sun, and receive the food their parents bring; when approached they become irritated, snapping with their beaks, and retreat reluctantly into the hole; and for some weeks after leaving it they make it a refuge from danger. Old and young birds sometimes live together for four or five months. I believe that nine-tenths of the Owls on the pampas make their own burrows, but as they occasionally take possession of the forsaken holes of mammals to breed in, it is probable that they would always observe this last habit, if suitable holes abounded, as on the North-American prairies inhabited by the marmot. Probably our Burrowing-Owl originally acquired the habit of breeding in the ground in the open level regions it frequented; and when this habit (favourable as it must have been in such unsheltered situations) had become ineradicable, a want of suitable burrows would lead it to clean out such old ones as had become choked up with rubbish, to deepen such as were too shallow, and ultimately to excavate for itself. The mining instinct varies greatly in strength, even on the pampas. Some pairs, long mated, only begin to dig when the breeding-season is already on them; others make their burrows as early as April—that is six months before the breeding-season. Generally both birds work, one standing by and regarding operations with an aspect of grave interest, and taking its place in the pit when the other retires; but sometimes the female has no assistance from her partner, and the burrow then is very short. Some pairs work expeditiously and their kennel is deep and neatly made; others go about their task in a perfunctory manner, and begin, only to abandon, perhaps half a dozen burrows, and then rest two or three weeks from their unprofitable labours. But whether industrious or indolent, by September they all have their burrows made. I can only account for Azara’s unfortunate statement, repeated since by scores of compilers, that the Owl never constructs its own habitations, by assuming that a century ago, when he lived and the country was still very sparsely settled, this Owl had not yet become so abundant or laid aside the wary habit the aborigines had taught it, so that he did not become very familiar with its habits.