The Painted Desert selected Higgin to direct the film, as well as naming the stars of the film, William Boyd and Dorothy Burgess. Later in the month it was reported that Higgin would head to Arizona to begin location scouting for the film, accompanied by fellow director, Tay Garnett, however in August Higgin began scouting in the Arizona desert with the screenwriter, Tom Buckingham. It was announced that the film would employ over 300 extras. Higgin was familiar with the area, having working in and around Flagstaff, Arizona as a lumberjack prior to his entering the film industry. Towards the end of August
Desert owl demonstrated that the holotype of "S. butleri" was not actually a member of this species, but was instead most likely an Omani owl (which had been described as a new species, "S. omanensis", in 2013). Because the allocation of "Strix butleri" to the Omani owl left the more widespread species without a name, the authors of the study named it "S. hadorami" after Israeli ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai, and gave it the new common name desert tawny owl (which has been subsequently shortened to desert owl by some authors). Desert owl The desert owl or desert tawny owl ("Strix hadorami"), formerly