400 THE OWLS 



rats and mice in a district is self-evident. Lord Lilford says that he 

 has seen a pair of barn-owls bring food to their nest no less than 

 seventeen times within half an hour. This rate, if continued for only 

 four hours out of the twenty-four, would give (if we include the animals 

 eaten by the old birds themselves) more than 150 ' rats and mice and 

 such small deer ' destroyed daily for the support of one nest of owls. 

 Is it surprising that vermin abound where their natural enemies have 

 been exterminated by farmers, and gamekeepers, and plumassiers ? 

 At this present time, when a plague of rats infest many districts 

 of the country, I need make no excuse for quoting the experience of 

 so sound and practical an ornithologist as the President of the B.O.U. 

 on the utility of the barn-owl." These words of Mr. Tegetmeier are as 

 true to-day, unfortunately, as they were twenty years ago, for even 

 now these unfortunate birds are only protected by a few of the more 

 enlightened and better informed farmers and game-preservers. 

 St. John, in his most delightful Wild /Sports of the Highlands, cites an 

 instance where owls having been nearly destroyed by numerous pole- 

 traps placed about the fields for their destruction, as well as for the 

 equally brutal destruction of hawks, rats and mice increased to such 

 an extent on the disappearance of their worst enemies, and committed 

 such havoc among nursery gardens and farm buildings, that the pro- 

 prietors were obliged to have all pole-traps taken down. As a result, 

 the pests disappeared in proportion as the owls and hawks increased. 



Game-preservers, however, are not all dead to the value of the 

 barn-owl and its relatives. Thus Mr. J. H. Gurney writes: 1 "My 

 keeper has had two kestrels', one sparrow-hawk's, one tawny-owl's, 

 and two barn-owls' nests within half a mile of his 300 young pheasants, 

 which the sparrow-hawks have not touched." He cites the sparrow- 

 hawk because this bird is the one most likely to be troublesome to the 

 game-preserver. Mr. Heatley Noble, another ornithologist of repute, 

 gives similar testimony in the Zoologist for 1900, p. 423. 



The chosen retreats which shelter the barn-owl during the day 



1 Zoologist, 1901, 132. 



