SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



is an aerial hunter. The kestrel, it may be, 

 brings some patient wood-craft into play, but 

 when he hovers aloft, the tiny mouse creeping 

 in the tangled grasses far below leaves him no 

 alternative. 



The owls, again, have little need of the cunning 

 of the fox, or the patience of the heron. Nature 

 has formed them on a plan that gives them an 

 immeasurable advantage over their victims. 

 Their eyes are so constructed that they gather 

 in the faintest and fewest rays of light, and the 

 feet and claws are finely formed for the sudden 

 seizure of prey. In the owl we see a carefully per- 

 fected and delicately balanced engine of death, 

 framed to survey the intricacies of the herbage in 

 the darkness, to ghde swiftly and silently through 

 the air, and to bring down the relentless mechanism 

 of foot and talon upon the quarry. From such 

 a foe there is no safety for even the wariest 

 mouse as it steals along, sheltered as it may be- 

 lieve, in the double security of dense cover and 

 of night. 



Although owls move through the air with the 

 buoyancy of thistledown they are birds of ex- 

 traordinary power. We once placed a pair of 

 tawny owls in an out-house that had become 

 infested with rats and mice. At intervals 

 through the night one could hear the thud of 

 the pouncing birds on the wooden floor and the 

 terror-stricken squeaks of the victims. The 

 birds themselves were probably disconcerted by 

 the contact with a hard surface in place of the 

 grassy hollows where the descent is usually made, 

 but it became clear that their airily-light forms 

 are capable of a most fierce and forcible on- 

 slaught. 



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