154 



THE BIRDS OF ESSEX. 



Order STRIGES. 



Family STRIGID^E, 



Barn Owl: Strix flammca. Locally, "White Owl," "Grey 

 Owl," " Billy Owl," and " Willy." 



A fairly-common resident, breeding in old hollow trees, church 

 towers, dove-cotes, &c. I often hear them after dark near Chelmsford. 



No bird more richly deserves protection 

 than this. It feeds almost entirely 

 upon mice, shrews, and young rats, 

 and rarely touches birds of any kind 

 — a fact for which I can vouch, having 

 paid much attention to the point. 



Albin says (3. ii. Il) that the specimen he 

 figures was met with " in a field near Waltham 

 Abbey, in the dusk of the evening, fl3'ing up 

 and down, and now and then catching at the 

 grass." He adds : " I desired my son, who 

 was with me, to shoot him, and when we dis- 

 sected him I found in his stomach several of 

 the White Grass-moths and other insects." 

 Mr. Buxton says (47. 83) : " I used to hear 

 tliis bird nightly twenty years ago in Lord's 

 Bushes, the old hollow trees of which it fre- 

 quented. I am sorry to say it has disappeared 

 Mr. Grubb speaks of it (39) as " an almost constant resi- 

 They have for some years nested in the large disused railway 

 The Rev. J. C. Atkinson writes (36. 43) : — 



" My most familiar boy-acquaintance, however, was with the nesting-place 

 and habits of a pair which nested for many consecutive 3^ears in a slight hollow in 

 the crown of a large pollard elm tree in my father's churchyard [at Layer Marney] 

 in Essex. There were usually three or four young ones year by year, often with 

 perceptible differences of growth among them. * * * Quainter, graver, odder, 

 stranger, more irresistibly comic creatures than these young Owls I never saw ; 

 and the hissing and snoring, and peering looks at the spectator, and strange antic- 

 contortions I heard and saw, baffle all attempts at description. The entertain- 

 ment, for such it was most trul}'', usually began some little time before sunset, 

 about which time the old birds might be seen commencing their labours of pur- 

 veying food for Masters and Misses Howlet. At intervals of from seven to ten 

 minutes one or other of them came to the nest with a prey, and I could always 

 tell by the sounds and gestures of the young Owls when the old one was approach- 

 ing. How they knew I could not tell ; it was not by sight, and 1 could hear no. 



BAKN OWL 



from that locality." 

 dent " at Sudbury, 

 sheds at Dagenham. 



