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THE LITTLE OWL. 

 (Athene noctua.) 



The Little Owl makes its nest where it has its ordinary 

 dwelling-place; that is to say, in hollows, behind beams, 

 sometimes even under bridges. The clutch of eggs is 

 four to five, and they are almost perfectly round. The 

 young are covered with white down. 



This is a friendly little species; it likes to get under 

 the house-roof, into barns and towers; retires also into 

 the hollow of a tree and clefts in old masonry. A capital 

 mouse-hunter, it feeds also largely on insects, and haunts 

 the lawns to get out the earthworms. In winter it catches 

 birds at roost, getting numbers of Thrushes, also mice 

 and other small mammals. When the chase is prolonged 

 till daylight the small birds mob the Little Owl, 

 surrounding him in numbers. They dare not meddle 

 with him because of his sharp claws, but they scold and 

 chatter at him as a shameless thief. Bird-catchers profit 

 by this, and they fasten him to a bough to act as a lure. 

 There is in Hungary a superstition that no one dies 

 where this Little Owl appears and utters his cry of 

 Kooweek, kooweek ! which comes down from the gables 

 or the attic windows of the house. 



The numbers of the Little Owl have been increasing in 

 England of late. Mr. Meade- Waldo informed me that 

 in the neighbourhood of Penshurst, near his own home, 

 in Kent, he had seen as many as sixteen Little Owls 

 perched on the telegraph wires on the line between two 



