Mammalia, birds, and fishes. I have kept many of this
species in confinement, but have been singularly unfortunate
with them, as for some unknown reason I have
lost them all within three or four years of their arrival
at Lilford.
After the death of Mr. Edward Fountaiue, of Easton,
near Norwich, whose success in rearing Owls in captivity
is well known to all British ornithologists, I
purchased six of this species from his executor, and sent
the keeper of my aviaries to fetch them from Easton;
they arrived safely at Lilford on August 29, 1889, but
the person in whose charge they had been left in
Norfolk could give my man no precise information as to
their age or sex, nor, indeed, could she positively state
which, if any, of the six birds had been bred at Easton;
two at least were adult males. On June 4, 1890, a
pair of these Owls showed an inclination to nest by
scratching a hole in the gravel of their aviary: we
immediately removed the other birds and left this pair
in sole possession of a roomy compartment, protecting
them from outside observation by fastening garden
matting all round the wired front and one side of the
enclosure, which was further protected at the back and
other side by a high stone wall. On June 7 the female
bird was sitting, and we left her undisturbed till
July 10; during this time she was regularly fed by the
male, and, as far as we could ascertain, seldom, if ever,
left her nest; the male bird savagely attacked any one
who even opened the door to throw in food, and both
birds cried savagely at the mere sound of human footsteps
outside their abode. On the day last named my
man succeeded, in spite of the furious onslaught of the
male, in getting his hand into the nest, and extracted
an egg containing a lively chick with its beak well
through the shell. On July 12 we found that two
young birds had been hatched out, and that four of the
five remaining eggs were “ chipping.” On July 20 the
nest contained three eggs only, two of which contained
dead young birds, whilst the third was rotten; we took
this one away, and the next day the nest was empty and
deserted, the old birds having certainly devoured the
whole of their progeny, as Artemus Ward says “ on foot
and in the shell.” For many days after the final catastrophe
the female took to perching, a habit to which she
was by no means frequently addicted before she had
laid, she now constantly uttered a mournful cry that
we had not before heard, very different from her sharp
angry bark of menace whilst she was sitting. I am
strongly of opinion that in this atrocity the male bird
was the chief, if not the sole culprit | but I regret to
say that it is now impossible to learn from any future
experience how to allot the blame with regard to him,
as both he and the only other bird of the six positively
known to be a male have died since the events above
recorded.