46 BIRDS OF PREY 



THE GREAT HORNED OwL 1 is, by necessity, an aerial 

 pirate and highway robber the tiger of the air. Its temper 

 is fierce and intractable, and if you attempt to make friends 

 with one in captivity, it will hiss like a snake, snap its beak 

 like an angry peccary, and dare you to come on. Of all the 

 birds I know, there is no other so persistently savage in cap- 

 tivity as this bloody-minded game-killer. Of course, the Owl 

 is not to blame for the raw-meat appetite which Nature gave 

 him, and for which he feels bound to provide; but there is no 

 reason why he should have a temper like a black leopard to- 

 ward those who feed him. 



"Of all the birds of prey, with the exception, possibly, of 

 the goshawk and Cooper's hawk," says Dr. A. K. Fisher, 

 "the Great Horned Owl is the most destructive to poultry. 

 All kinds of poultry seem to be taken, though when Guinea- 

 fowls and turkeys are obtainable, it shows a preference for 

 these. In sections of the country where it is common, the 

 inhabitants complain bitterly of its ravages." In the museum 

 of the Philadelphia Academy is an Owl which carried off from 

 one farm twenty-seven individuals of various kinds of poultry 

 before it was shot. 



But let us give even the Horned Owl its just due. Mr. 

 O. E. Niles, of Ohio, once found in a nest of this bird "several 

 full-grown Norway rats with their skulls opened and brains 

 removed," and on the ground under the tree which contained 

 the nest he found "the bodies of one hundred and thirteen rats, 

 most of them full grown!" Now, in the course of a year, 

 would not one hundred and thirteen Norway rats consume 



1 Bu'bo virginianus. Length, from 20 to 24 inches. 



