COMMON INSECTS AND BIRDS 141 



flying low where he gathers up field mice and eats them in large 

 numbers. You can recognize him when he is high in the air bv 

 the white spot just above the base of the tail. He is an excellent 

 hawk and seldom bothers poultry. 



Here is the owl. He is looking at you with both eyes. That 

 is why in story books old master owl is known as the wise one, 

 the parson or the judge. He looks very wise just because he 

 can see you with both eyes at once. The owls are the only birds 

 that can do this. Only the great horned owl ever does any harm. 

 Just a few of them are found here. He eats gophers, rabbits, 

 mice and other rodents. He doesn't do much harm as a general 

 thing, but if he does get to catching poultry, he ought to be shot. 



The screech owl is a great mouser, and he also seeks out 

 large insects. It may be that he gives his tremulous cry at night 

 because he is hungry for more mice and rats. At any rate he 

 catches large numbers of them about our houses and barns. 



One of the very best of all is the barn owl or monkey-faced 

 owl. He is a famous mouser and can beat any cat. Fortunately 

 we do not have to kill owls to find out what they eat. They swal- 

 low their food whole or nearly so. Their stomachs roll up the 

 indigestible fur, bones, skulls, etc., into little pellets and regur- 

 gitate these or throw them back out of the mouth and drop them 

 beneath their roosting places. You can gather up these pellets 

 and find out what they have eaten. A pair of these roosted for 

 some weeks in the tower of the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- 

 ington, D. C. The scientists there gathered up the pellets to find 

 out what animals they had eaten. They found 45-1 skulls of 

 small animals ; of these, 225 were skulls of meadow mice, that 

 destroy grasses and crops; 179 house mice, 20 rats, 20 shrews, 

 () jumping mice, 2 pine mice, 1 star-nosed mole, and 1 vesper 

 sparrow but no poultry. Now, you couldn't find a pair of cats 

 in the land with a record like that, and these owls ought to be 

 protected. If you have some around your barn, protect and 

 keep them there and don't let them be disturbed. 



Just a word about the cat. Cats get very numerous about 

 your premises in a short time. Have you ever heard of any- 

 body who had more cats than he wanted and who took them out 

 and dropped them along the road some place? Did you ever 

 hear of anybody so mean as that? Well, if you did, the man 

 ought to be prosecuted to the limit of the law^ which unfortunately 

 is not on the statute books. First of all, it is cruel. Such cats 

 have to find something to eat or else starve. Since the cat must 

 get its mice by sitting down in a secluded place and waiting for 



