480 STRIX FLAMMEA. 



end of the bridge, I saw the owl rise out of the water with a 

 fish in her claws, and take it to the nest."" It has been alleged 

 that it does not prey on Shrews ; but I have found four skulls 

 of these animals, along with two of an Arvicola, in the stomach 

 of one. The quantity which it swallows may seem surprising 

 to a person who does not consider how many mice may be 

 squeezed into a sac two inches in diameter. Hemains of eight 

 or ten animals may sometimes be found in its stomach, but in 

 various degrees of decomposition, the greater part of some hav- 

 ing passed into the intestine before the rest have been procured. 

 The skulls and other bones, enveloped in the hair, are ejected 

 in pellets, after the bird has retired to its resting-place. " When 

 it has young," says Mr Waterton, " it will bring a mouse to 

 its nest about every twelve or fifteen minutes. But in order to 

 have a proper idea of the enormous quantity of mice which 

 this bird destroys, we must examine the pellets which it ejects 

 from its stomach in the place of its retreat. Every pellet con- 

 tains from four to seven skeletons of mice. In sixteen months 

 from the time that the apartment of the owl on the old gate- 

 way was cleaned out, there has been a deposit of above a 

 bushel of pellets.'" 



The shriek of the White Owl, occasionally heard at night, 

 and usually in solitary places, which few persons enter with- 

 out some feeling of awe, has given it a kind of mysterious 

 character with the vulgar ; and it must be confessed that, in- 

 dependently of any superstitious feeling, its cry coming unex- 

 pectedly on the ear, in a church-yard, or among the crumbling 

 ruins of some monastery or castle, is little calculated to inspire 

 pleasant ideas. In like manner, the long loud wailing cry of 

 the Great Northern Diver, heard from the dark bosom of the 

 ocean, by a person wandering at night on the lonely shores of 

 the Hebrides, infallibly strikes him with no inconsiderable 

 degree of awe. The White Owl has no other cry, if we except 

 the hissing noise which it makes. The snoring sound heard 

 from its nest, Mr Waterton informs us is the cry of the young 

 for food. 



The nest, which is placed in the usual retreat of the bird, 

 is composed of twigs and straws loosely arranged. The eggs. 



