225



THE


Avicultubal Magazine,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF

THE AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



Third Series. —Yol. IX.—No. 8 .—All rights reserved. JUNE, 1918.



OWLS’ NESTS AND THEIR CONTENTS*


By J. H. Gurney.


The Barn Owl is a quaint and useful bird, and, happily for

agriculturists, it is generally distributed, so that there are few

parishes of any extent in Norfolk where its weird shriek cannot be

heard. A measure of protection is accorded to them, yet their

numbers hardly seem to increase, which certainly is not for lack of

field mice, of which we have plenty. As far as my experience goes

in this county, the idea that they sometimes eat the young of tame

Pigeons in dove-cots, though still prevalent, is absolutely without

foundation. To-day, although the wind was not high, a large pollard

oak near my house blew down, which I regretted the more because it

had long been a haunt of the Barn Owl. As was to be expected,

there were plenty of pellets in the cavity of its trunk, some of which

were so dried that they may have been cast up twelve months or

more. With some assistance I collected 114, and had them soaked

in water. The result was the skulls, or portions of skulls, of 19 young

rats, 126 long- and short-tailed field mice, 69 shrew mice, and 3 small

birds, apparently Greenfinches—a pretty good testimony this to the

utility of the Barn Owl! I have never seen a full-sized rat in a



Reprinted from the ‘ Zoologist.’



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