164 THE BARN OWL. 



belongs to the owls alone, enabling them in silence and darkness 

 to pounce upon creatures liable to over-abundance, which also 

 choose night to fulfil their mission on the ground below them. 

 And as the screaming swift issues from ruins on the approach of 

 gloaming — skimming through the air in search of flies — so may 

 the barn owl be seen on the approach of twilight stealing over 

 the meadows or stooky fields, searching stackyards, and, like a 

 feathered cat, as noiselessly entering an outhouse or barn in 

 search of its prolific prey. It often seizes a mouse in each foot 

 amongst the labyrinth of stacks, then perches on the top of one 

 of them to swallow them whole. When we consider that 150 

 mice have been killed by a terrier in one stack (the produce of 

 two and a half acres) about three feet from the ground, where 

 the first six or eight sheaves meet, and a peck of grain separated 

 from the ears so gnawed as to resemble coarse meal, besides 

 what is done in the fields and destruction to grass roots, one 

 must see the great good this beautiful and useful bird does ; but 

 which, like the kestrel, is so blindly shot down by the so-called 

 keepers of game and killers of vermin. In connection with the 

 present outcry about the mice plague in the Border Counties, 

 K. Scot Skirving says, in the Scotsman of April 23rd, 1892 — 



"In view of the present plague, I trust it may result in opening the eyes 

 of game preservers to the folly of killing all birds of prey— but especially 

 those farmers' friends, the kestrel and the owl. By the way, I am assured 

 that it was 20,000, and not 1,000 owls, that were advertised for in London, 

 in consequence of the rage for skins to deck (?) ladies' hats. I conclude by 

 saying it is impossible that any Commission can throw more light upon the 

 subject than has been obtained during the last eighty years. I am glad to 

 see farmers now think that even rooks are not merely birds which lead 

 wholly evil lives. " 



Another writer says that even " magpies destroy numbers of 

 mice, swallowing them entire," as he had "frequently found 

 them in the gizzard entire." Thus we see 



" There is a soul of goodness in things evil. 

 For our bad neighbours make us early stirrers ; 

 Thus do we gather honey from the weed, 

 And make a moral of the devil himself." 



But farmers are beginning to find out that even the 

 persecuted mole, like the hedgehog, is a friend to them, by 

 preying on mice, besides turning up the soil, which helps the 

 roots of the grass, one writer saying the only farmer he knew 

 that made £78,000 off his farming paid mole-catchers for putting 

 moles upon his fields. Some authors say the barn owl rejects 

 the shrews ( Sor ex araneus.) Others have found shrews entire 



