WAYS OF THE OWL. 185 



and crunch away at the joints until they are 

 mellow. They generally pull out the stiff wing 

 and tail feathers, even in quite moderate-sized 

 birds. Small snakes they swallow squirming. 

 Snowdon, on the other hand, ignores live snakes, 

 and his first act with dead food is to swallow it 

 whole if he can possibly distend his throat far 

 enough to let it pass. I have seen the head of 

 a large rooster vanish down his throat, bill fore- 

 most, without his making any effort to crush it. 

 Often a piece of food will stick in his throat 

 and refuse to go down, in spite of vigorous 

 jerks, jumps, and convulsive swallowing. It is 

 then ejected and sometimes dropped altogether. 

 With a large piece of meat or fish his method is 

 different. Standing upon it, he snaps at it vi- 

 ciously and tears off small bits, in eating which he 

 makes a smacking noise. Engaged in this way 

 he is a disgusting spectacle. His head is poked 

 forward, and the feathers upon it seem flattened. 

 The hairy feathers around his beak are drawn 

 back, and his red mouth is open much of the 

 time. If disturbed while eating, he makes his 

 shrill and extremely piercing cry. He is per- 

 fectly willing to be fed by hand, snapping at 

 and bolting morsels of liver as fast as they are 

 passed to him. He sometimes eats enormous 

 quantities of food in a short time. He ate the 

 whole of a full-grown bittern in twenty -four 



