ril ■ 



of their elder hrctliren. I have once or twice scon u 

 Barn-Owl flying apparently on liis own account in sun- 

 shine, but when suddenly disturbed from their natural 

 shady resorts in the daytime, they generally seem to be 

 quite confused, and fly with a wavering and uncertain 

 flight into the nearest leafy tree. As a rule the Barn- 

 Owl sits during the hours of sunshine in a hollow tree, 

 a dark recess in old masonry, a dense mass of ivy, or the 

 gloom of conifers, and emerges from his home at dusk 

 to scour over the fields and about farmsteads in search 

 of food, but in dull winter weather these Owls may 

 often be seen hunting before sunset ; their flight is per- 

 fectly noiseless, and their quickness of vision in a dim 

 hght quite marvellous ; they quarter their ground much 

 in the same fashion as the Harriers, and go over the 

 same beat pretty regularly night after night. A young 

 Owl of this species that I kept as a pet in my school- 

 days, on one occasion, when about half-grown, swallowed 

 nine full-grown house-mice in rapid succession till the 

 tail of the ninth stuck out of his mouth, and he could do 

 no more, but within three hours he was hungry again, 

 and was barely satisfied with four more of the little 

 quadrupeds ; with this appetite and capacity for stowage 

 the numbers of four-footed vermin supplied by a pair of 

 Barn-Owls to a brood of six or seven ravening youngsters 

 may well be imagined : I have seen an old pair bring 

 food to their brood seventeen times in half an hour from 

 a rick-yard near their nest. A great number of these 

 and other Owls are massacred and sold to be made into 

 fire-screens and plumes for ladies' hats, barbarities upon 

 which I can hardly trust myself to enlarge ; the bird- 



