January 21 



those trees I often find large grey pellets, consisting 

 of the fur and bones of rats and mice, which it is 

 the habit of the owls, as they cannot digest them, 

 to reject each morning after their nightly feast. 

 When owls are kept as pets, their raw meat diet 

 should include a mixture of small feathers, or fur 

 of some kind, else the birds will not continue in a 

 healthy state. The frequent occurrence in their 

 pellets of the wing cases of the dark-blue dung- 

 beetle shows that this is a favourite article of diet 

 with the owls. 



In order to ascertain the number of mice and 

 other rodents destroyed by these useful birds, seven 

 hundred and six pellets of the barn owl were care- 

 fully examined, and in them were found the remains 

 of sixteen bats, three rats, two hundred and ninety- 

 three voles or field mice, 

 one thousand five hundred 

 and ninety shrews and 

 twenty-two small birds. We 

 thus see that without their 

 aid the farmer would find 

 it very difficult to save his 



r . . , OWL PELLET. 



crops trom devastation, and 



that these useful birds should be protected and 



encouraged by every means in our power. 



A few years ago, when the crops in Southern 

 Scotland were threatened with complete destruc- 

 tion by field mice or voles, great flocks of owls 

 appeared on the scene, and corrected a plague 

 which human science had proved quite unable to 

 deal with. 



