The Audubon Reader (48 page)

Having arrived at
Charleston, South Carolina, in October 1833, as soon as my family and myself were settled in the house of my friend the
Reverend John Bachman I received information that a pair of Owls (of the present species) had a nest in the upper story of an abandoned sugar house in the city, when I immediately proceeded to the place accompanied by Dr. Samuel Wilson and
William Kunhardt, Esq. We ascended cautiously to the place, I having pulled off my boots to prevent noise. When we reached it I found a sort of large garret filled with sugar molds and lighted by several windows, one of which had two panes broken. I at once discovered the spot where the Owls were by the hissing sounds of the
young ones and approached slowly and cautiously towards them until within a few feet, when the parent bird, seeing me, flew quickly towards the window, touched the frame of the broken panes and glided silently through the aperture. I could not even afterwards observe the course of its flight. The young were three in number and covered with down of a rich cream color. They raised themselves on their legs, appeared to swell and emitted a constant hissing sound somewhat resembling that of a large snake when angry. They continued thus without altering their position during the whole of our stay, which lasted about twenty minutes. They were on a scattered parcel of bits of straw and surrounded by a bank made of their ejected pellets. Very few marks of their excrements were on the floor and they were beautifully clean. A cotton rat, newly caught and still entire, lay beside them and must have been brought from a distance of several miles, that animal abounding in the rice fields, none of which, I believe, are nearer than three or four miles. After making some arrangements with the Negro man who kept the house we returned home. The eggs from which these young Owls had been hatched must have been laid six weeks before this date, or about the 15th of September.

On the 25th of November they had grown much in size, but none of the feathers had yet made their appearance excepting the primaries, which were now about an inch long, thick, full of blood and so tender that the least pressure of the fingers might have burst them. As the young grow more and more, the parents feed and attend to them less frequently than when very small, coming to them in the night only with
food. This proves the caution of these
birds in avoiding danger, and the faculty which the young possess of supporting abstinence in this middle state of their growth.

On the 7th of December I visited the Owls in company with my friend John Bachman. We found them much grown; indeed, their primaries were well out; but their back and breast and all their lower parts were still thickly covered with down.

On the 6th of January I again saw them, but one of the young was dead although in good condition. I was surprised that their
food still continued to be composed entirely of small quadrupeds, and principally of the rat mentioned above.

My last visit to them was on the 18th of January. The two younger ones were now to all appearance fully grown but were yet unable to fly. A few tufts of down still remained attached to the feathers on scattered parts of the body. I took them home. One was killed and the skin preserved.

Now these facts are the more interesting [in] that none of the numerous European authors with whom I am acquainted have said a single word respecting the time of
breeding of this species, but appear to be more intent on producing long lists of synonyms than on presenting the useful materials from which the student of nature can draw inferences. I shall therefore leave to them to say whether our species is or is not the same as the one found in the churches and ruins of Europe. Should it prove to be the same species and if the European bird breeds, as I suspect it does, at so different a period of the year, the habits of the American Owl will form a kind of mystery in the operations of nature, as they differ not only from those of the bird in question but of all other Owls with which I am acquainted.

My opinion is, that the Barn Owl of the United States is far more abundant in the Southern Districts than in the other parts. I never found it to the east of
Pennsylvania and only twice in that state, nor did I ever see or even hear of one in the Western Country; but as soon as I have reached the maritime districts of the
Carolinas,
Georgia, the
Floridas and all along to
Louisiana, the case has always been different. In
Cuba they are quite abundant according to the reports which I have received from that island. I am indeed almost tempted to believe that the few which have been found in Pennsylvania were bewildered birds surprised by the
coldness of the winter and perhaps unable to return to the Southern Districts. During my visit to
Labrador I neither saw any of these birds nor found a single person who had ever seen them, although the people to whom I spoke were well acquainted with the
Snowy Owl, the
Grey Owl, and the
Hawk Owl.

Thomas Butler King, Esq., of St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, sent me two very beautiful specimens of this Owl which had been caught alive. One died shortly after their arrival at Charleston; the other was in fine order when I received it. The person to whose care they were consigned kept them for many weeks at Charleston before I reached that city and told me that in the night their cries never failed to attract others of the same species, which he observed hovering about the place of their confinement.

This species is altogether
nocturnal or crepuscular, and when disturbed during the day flies in an irregular bewildered manner as if at a loss how to look for a place of refuge. After long observation I am satisfied that our bird feeds entirely on the smaller species of quadrupeds, for I have never found any portions of birds about their nests nor even the remains of a single feather in the pellets which they regurgitate and which are always formed of the bones and hair of quadrupeds.

Owls which approach to the
diurnal species in their habits or which hunt for
food in the morning and evening twilight are more apt to seize on objects which are themselves more diurnal than otherwise or than the animals which I have found to form the constant food of our Barn Owl. Thus the
Short-eared, the Hawk, the Fork-tailed, the
Burrowing and other Owls which hunt either during broad day, or mostly towards evening or at the return of day, will be found to feed more on mixed food than the present species. I have no doubt that the anatomist will detect corresponding differences in the eye, as they have already been found in the ear. The stomach is elongated, almost smooth, and of a deep gamboge-yellow; the intestines small, rather tough and measuring one foot nine inches in length.

Its
flight is light, regular and much protracted. It passes through the air at an elevation of thirty or forty feet in perfect silence and pounces on its prey like a Hawk, often waiting for a fair opportunity from the branch of a tree on which it alights for the purpose.
During day they are never seen unless accidentally disturbed, when they immediately try to hide themselves. I am not aware of their having any propensity to fish, as the Snowy Owl has, nor have I ever seen one pursuing a bird. Ever careful of themselves, they retreat to the hollows of trees and such holes as they find about old buildings. When kept in confinement they feed freely on any kind of flesh and will stand for hours in the same position, frequently resting on one leg while the other is drawn close to the body. In this position I watched one on my drawing table for six hours.

This species is never found in the depth of the forests but confines itself to the borders of the woods around large savannas or old abandoned fields overgrown with briars and rank grass where its food, which consists principally of field mice, moles, rats and other small quadrupeds, is found in abundance and where large beetles and bats fly in the morning and evening twilight. It seldom occurs at a great distance from the sea. I am not aware that it ever emits any cry or note as other owls are wont to do; but it produces a hollow hissing sound continued for minutes at a time which has always reminded me of that given out by an opossum when about to die by strangulation.

When on the ground this Owl moves by sidelong leaps with the body much inclined downwards. If wounded in the wing, it yet frequently escapes through the celerity of its motions. Its
hearing is extremely acute and as it marks your approach, instead of throwing itself into an attitude of defense, as Hawks are wont to do, it instantly swells out its plumage, extends its wings and tail, hisses and clacks its mandibles with force and rapidity. If seized in the hand it bites and scratches, inflicting deep wounds with its bill and claws.

It is by no means correct to say that this Owl, or indeed any other, always swallows its prey entire: some which I have kept in confinement have been seen tearing a young hare in pieces with their bills in the manner of hawks; and mice, small rats or bats are the largest objects that I have seen them gobble up entire, and not always without difficulty. From having often observed their feet and legs covered with fresh earth I am inclined to think that they may use them to scratch mice or moles out of their shallow burrows,
a circumstance which connects them with the
Burrowing Owls of our western plains, which like them have very long legs. In a room their
flight is so noiseless that one is surprised to find them removed from one place to another without having heard the least sound. They disgorge their pellets with difficulty, although generally at a single effort, but I did not observe that this action was performed at any regular period. I have mentioned these circumstances to induce you to examine more particularly the habits of the Barn Owls of Europe and the Southern states of America, that the question of their identity may be decided.

The pair which I have represented were given to me by my friend Richard Harlan, M.D., of Philadelphia. They had been brought from the south and were fine adult birds in excellent plumage. I have placed a ground squirrel under the feet of one of them as being an animal on which the species is likely to feed.

[The Barn Owl,
Tyto alba
, appears in Plate 171 of
The Birds of America
.]

Louisville, Kentucky

15 December 1831

Dear Mr. Havell,

… Mr. A. is I imagine in Florida, scouring the woods. His last letter is a month date since, but it takes a month to come from where he is to me. He wrote you from Charleston and doubtless informed you of his two subscribers there and how to forward to them. He has nine
new
drawings, much information and 250 [bird] skins and a number of insects. As soon as there is free navigation again of our river, you will have shipped to you the hundred [live wild] turkeys. You must send two males and two females to the honorable
Thomas Liddell, or rather let him know immediately and pick out the best for him. I hope to bring him some mockingbirds as I have gained much relative to the mode of keeping them that I did not know before. His other commissions Mr. A. will, I am sure, attend to. The River Ohio has been frozen over for nearly three weeks and the cold is so intense that I scarcely can do anything; my water jug is standing by a large fire and a tumbler of water on the chimneypiece is all ice …

Louisville, Kentucky

22 January 1832

… I assure you, my dear, you cannot be too careful; trust no one but your wife and children, surely you can confide in them for
everything
. I wrote you how your affairs with
Nicholas Berthoud stood and that he has 7,000 [dollars] against you in his books, and [name illegible] 4,000, now these people will take every advantage, depend upon it, the moment they think we are above want, and I cannot bear to think your labor should forever be wrested from you, which it may be, because as I told you before, N.B. did not act according
to law
in your affairs, and never advertised or made known to the world and your creditors that you had
given up all
[i.e., that Audubon had sold everything and taken bankruptcy in 1819 after his business failed], which he ought to have done. I only tell you this my love that you may be upon your guard, and once more I urge you to believe no one but us three can be trusted with money. Since we left Phila., Dr. Harlan has been posted as the vilest of vile, of this we know nothing at present, nor have we any need to notice it anyway; I hope he will turn out true to you. But I cannot help much anxiety to see this journey ended and ourselves once more living in ourselves, I hope and pray we may find it practicable to have our sons with us, or at least not left in the uncertain way they were before. They are too deserving to be left to the mercy of this hard world … Write fully whatever you wish us to do and it shall be done …

Having heard many wonderful accounts of a certain spring near the sources of the St. John’s River in East Florida, I resolved to visit it in order to judge for myself. On the 6th of January 1832 I left the plantation of my friend
John Bulow accompanied by an amiable and accomplished Scotch gentleman, an engineer employed by the planters of those districts in erecting their sugar-house establishments. We were mounted on horses of the Indian breed, remarkable for their activity and strength, and were provided with guns and some provisions. The weather was pleasant but not so our way, for no sooner had we left the “King’s Road” which had been cut by the Spanish government for a goodly distance than we entered a thicket of scrubby oaks succeeded by a still denser mass of low palmettos which extended about three miles and among the roots of which our nags had great difficulty in making good their footing. After this we entered the pine barrens so extensively distributed in this portion of the Floridas. The sand seemed to be all sand and nothing but sand and the palmettos at times so covered the narrow Indian trail which we followed that it required all the instinct or sagacity of ourselves and our horses to keep it.