BARN OWL, WHITE OWL, SCREECH OWL 35 



is, however, not met with within the Arctic Circle. 

 At home its food is nearly entirely mice, but in 

 Egypt it has no hedgerows to hunt, no large farm- 

 yards and rich granaries, and though it does get 

 some mice it has to take lizards, an occasional small 

 bird, and sometimes fish, or even scraps of carrion. 

 Of all the owls this has the softest, most silent 

 flight, and this in itself is somewhat uncanny as it 

 quite quietly passes close to you, and then dis- 

 appears in the gloom, from which a little later may 

 come a terrifying screech as of a strangled infant. 

 There is little room for wonder, then, that all simple 

 folk should have regarded this bird as evil-omened : 

 and the old Scriptures have many references in 

 this spirit when describing places haunted, desolated, 

 the "abode of owls and dragons." To this day, 

 in our own country, the feeling is evinced most 

 strangely in spite of all our modern education. 

 Very cleverly the early Egyptians caught the 

 most salient feature — the extraordinary large mask- 

 like face — and in some of the wall decorations at 

 Deir-el-Bahari, which are in perfect preservation, 

 it would be well-nigh impossible to improve on 

 them as exact portraits of the Barn Owl. A 

 possible cause of the choice of this bird is that it 

 is one of the best-known species : for of all the 



