168 THE BARN OWL. 



it flew noiselessly over the brae. But they have disappeared 

 years ago, and are, so far as I know, not found in the vicinity 

 of St Andrews. The nest is scantily formed of twigs and straw 

 loosely arranged. They lay four, five, or six white eggs, 1J by 

 1 J inches, a little less than the long and short eared species, and 

 not so round. This is the handsomest and most beautiful of all 

 our British owls. The general colour is light reddish yellow, 

 finely variegated with ash grey, each feather minutely undulated 

 with darker grey, and marked near the tips with two white spots ; 

 all the under parts pure white. The tarsi are not so full 

 feathered, and one distinction is the toes are thinly covered with 

 hairy feathers, and the iris is bluish black — unlike most of the 

 owls', which are yellow. The male is 14 inches long to tip of 

 wings, which extend about an inch beyond the tail, and 35 inches 

 across the wings ; the female is 15 J inches long and 38 in extent 

 of wings. The plumage is soft and downy, having all the buoyant 

 characteristics of the family in a marked degree. The wings 

 are long and broad ; but the tail is comparatively shorter than 

 the rest of the owls', being only 5 inches, against 6 or 7 

 — the best proof that its buoyancy is so perfect as scarcely to 

 need the short, narrow tail to check its descent upon its agile 

 prey. How very different from the swift, long-tailed, heavy 

 falcons or hawks, who swoop or turn with the speed of the 

 wind, requiring all the length and breadth of tail to check their 

 headlong plunge, thus showing the perfection of Nature, and 

 her distinction between the night and day birds of prey. The 

 lightness of the one, compared to their feathery bulk, makes 

 their flight not only buoyant, but almost unsteady in its very 

 buoyancy, enabling them not only to fly noiselessly at a close 

 height above their prey and steal unawares upon it, but to snatch 

 it up almost without the use of a tail at all ; while the heavier 

 day birds of prey need a longer rudder to enable them to perform 

 their more rapid flight and still more sudden deviations — wise ! 

 wise ! faultless designer ! — convincing proof of the wisdom and 

 broad perfection of the eternal source and soul of life. 



Mr Waterton, probably the best authority, as he almost 

 domesticated the birds on his estate, says : " When it has 

 young, it will bring a mouse to its nest every 12 or 15 minutes; 

 but to have a proper idea of the enormous quantity of mice this 

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

 its stomach in the place of its retreat. Every pellet contains 

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

 the time that the apartment of the owl on the old gateway was 



