SAW-WHET OWL. Cryptoglaux acadica (Gmelin)

Field characters (inferred from specimens).—Size small (between that of Pigmy Owl and Screech Owl); head round (no ear tufts) (fig. 39c); eyes straw yellow; color above cinnamon brown, below white, with broad streakings of warm rusty brown (not blackish). [Living birds not seen by us.]

Occurrence.—Sparse resident on floor of Yosemite Valley and probably also in vicinity of Dudley, 6 miles east of Coulterville.

On July 24, 1915, a Golden-crowned Kinglet's nest, in use earlier the same season, was taken from its site 30 feet above the ground, in a smallish yellow pine standing near Yosemite Falls Camp. This nest, now preserved in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, had as part of its constituent material a considerable number of the feathers of a Saw-whet Owl. There were twenty or more of these feathers, broad rusty striped ones from the under surface of the owl, and cinnamon brown ones from the back. In fact, the bulk of the inner lining of the nest cavity consisted of these feathers, of unmistakable identity.

What else could we infer but that a Saw-whet Owl had met with some mishap within the radius in which the kinglets had done their scouting for suitable nesting material? The feathers were full-fluffed, not in the least bedraggled; this would seem to prove that they had not been exposed to wet weather. The accident that made them available to the kinglets must have occurred recently, after the heavy rains of early spring.

Upon visiting Yosemite Valley in May, 1919, we found a specimen of the Saw-whet Owl mounted in the Park Superintendent's office. Inquiry developed that Mrs. Jack Gaylor, a resident in the Valley, had killed three of these owls at different times during the period between 1916 and 1919, and that the bird mounted was one of these. She had "knocked them over with a stick," two, when she discovered them perched on crossbeams under a shed roof, and a third, when she found it in the granary of her barn. The exact dates of these occurrences had not been kept. One individual was seen during the middle of the day while being bothered by a number of Sierra Juncos in Yosemite Valley on August 26, 1920 (C. W. Michael, MS).

On July 13, 1920, the dried remains of a Saw-whet Owl were found in the fire box of a rusty engine boiler at a deserted mine, one mile south of Dudley.

Thus the circumstantial evidence of 1915 indicating the occurrence of the Saw-whet Owl in the Yosemite region was fully corroborated by facts collected later. The birds may be present regularly in parts of the region, though hardly in large numbers. Like other nocturnal animals they could easily have escaped our eyes, and even our ears. Some one more fortunate than we will find them.