«6 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



quite certain it was 5. Buhu. Satisfied on this point, we only had to walk a few 

 paces along a ledge before the family group was in sight — two blind little puffs 

 covered with down just tinged with yellow, and an ^^^ with the prisoner inside 

 uttering his series of four or five chirps through the window he had made in the 

 shell, with a voice scarcely more feeble than that of his elder brothers. There 

 did not seem to be much difference in the ages of the three ; they were lying 

 iipon a small quantity of compressed fur, principally of rats, the remains of the 

 castings of the parent birds, their bed nearly flat, for there was not more than 

 two inches of soil. Uva-ursi and several other plants grew near ; and a small 

 Scotch fir-tree had its trunk curiously flattened to the perpendicular rock at the 

 back; the ledge was not more than two feet wide, and terminated abruptly just 

 beyond the nest ; the rock beneath was also perpendicular. We waited at the 

 nest a long time in the hope that the parent birds would show themselves ; but 

 it was not till we had left it that we saw them again sitting on the topmost 

 shoots of spruce firs with their ears finely relieved against the sky ; and as we 

 were nearly in the village again they hooted with a troubled note." The eggs 

 are usually two in number, sometimes three, but never more ; they are very large, 

 slightly oval, and of a creamy white, and measure from 2"48 to 2*i8 inches, by 

 from 2 to I "84 inches. 



The Bagle Owl is a very bold and savage bird, of powerful but noiseless 

 flight, is afraid of nothing, and there is hardly any bird that is too large for it 

 to fly at. It will not hesitate to attack an Eagle ; and will knock down and 

 make a meal ofi^ the Capercailzie. In Epirus Lord Lilford was convinced that the 

 Eagle Owls preyed chiefly during the autumn and winter upon wild- fowl, which 

 they seized as they were feeding on the open marshy lands by night. Although 

 largely preying upon hares, rabbits, and the larger feathered game, the Eagle Owl 

 does not disdain the smaller favourite items of an Owl's menu, such as rats, mice, 

 and beetles. It does well in captivity, freely nesting and rearing its young, and 

 " if not over-fed, and allowed to take a sun-bath when so inclined," will live to a 

 great age. In the aviaries at Lilford there was an Eagle Owl that was known 

 to be at least seventy 3'ears old. In confinement it seems to have a noble in- 

 difference to its surroundings ; when Swaysland, the well-known bird-stuffer of 

 Brighton, had his collection of tame Owls in a lower gallery of the West Pier, the 

 writer saw a couple of Eagle Owls sitting on their eggs in rough square boxes, 

 as placid as domestic hens in a fowl house, in spite of the presence and passing 

 of constant visitors. Although the Eagle Owl is a well-known bird owing to its 

 being always included in the collections of Zoological Gardens where it may be 

 seen sleeping in its cage with its ears erect, or else solemn^ awake, and constantly 



