Owls do eat birds, and, as I have just stated, so they do,
but if he allows his young hand-reared game-birds to be
out of their coops at the time that Owls are abroad in
search of food, surely the blame for losing them attaches
justly to him and not to the tempted Owl; I need
hardly say that wild-bred game-birds, whilst small enough
to be attacked by the Barn-Owl, are carefully stowed
away under their mother’s wings at the time when the
“ bird of night ” is on the quest of prey. I have
examined hundreds of the pellets cast up by this species
in and under their nesting-places, and never discovered
either bones or feathers of any game-bird, the castings
consisting mainly of the fur and bones of small mammalia,
with feathers and skulls of seed-eating birds, and
occasionally a few bones and scales of small fishes. For
many years past I have done my utmost to encourage
and protect Owls on my own property, and to urge upon
my neighbours to do the same, and I am glad to say
that at this time of writing (April 1890) I have authentic
information of no less than eleven Owls’ nests with their
full complement of eggs within a radius of three miles
from our home.
The Barn-Owl generally begins to lay early in April,
and, I think, begins to sit as soon as one or two eggs
are laid, though the full complement of eggs is seldom
less than six or seven : I am told that there are nine in
one of the nests to which I have just alluded. Young
Barn-Owls in all stages from newly-hatched down-clad
infancy to full feathering may be found in one and the
same nest at the same time, and there is good reason to
believe that the juniors are hatched out by the warmth
of their elder brethren. I have once or twice seen a
Barn-Owl flying apparently on his own account in sunshine,
but when suddenly, disturbed from their natural
shady resorts in the daytime, they generally seem to be
quite confused, and fly with a wavering and uncertain
flight into the nearest leafy tree. As a rule the Barn-
Owl sits during the hours of sunshine in a hollow tree,
a dark recess in old masonry, a dense mass of ivy, or the
gloom of conifers, and emerges from his home at dusk
to scour over the fields and about farmsteads in search
of food, but in dull winter weather these Owls may
often be seen hunting before sunset; their flight is perfectly
noiseless, and their quickness of vision in a dim
light quite marvellous; they quarter their ground much
in the same fashion as the Harriers, and go over the
same beat pretty regularly night after night. A young
Owl of this species that I kept as a pet in my schooldays,
on one occasion, when about half-grown, swallowed
nine full-grown house-mice in rapid succession till the
tail of the ninth stuck out of his mouth, and he could do
no more, but within three hours he was hungry again,
and was barely satisfied with four more of the little
quadrupeds; with this appetite and capacity for stowage
the numbers of four-footed vermin supplied by a pair of
Barn-Owls to a brood of six or seven ravening youngsters
may well be imagined: I have seen an old pair bring
food to their brood seventeen times in half an hour from
a rick-yard near their nest. A great number of these
and other Owls are massacred and sold to be made into
fire-screens and plumes for ladies’ hats, barbarities upon
which I can hardly trust myself to enlarge; the bird-
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