NIGHT AND DAY HUNTERS 181 



half -simple, half-sly expression that gives it a mysterious 

 air." It is often called the monkey-faced owl. 



By day all owls look sleepy and sad, but at dusk, when 

 rats and mice creep timidly forth, the barn owl, now 

 thoroughly awake, sallies from its hole and does greater 

 execution before morning than aU the traps in town. 

 Shrews, bats, frogs, grasshoppers, and beetles enlarge its 

 biU of fare. A pair of these mousers that had their nest in 

 an old apple tree near a hayrick that concealed the specta- 

 tor, brought eight mice to their brood in the hollow trunk in 

 less than an hour. 



The head of a mouse, the favorite tid-bit, is devoured 

 first; then follows the body, bolted whole if not too large. 

 One foot usually holds the smaller quarry; but a rat must 

 be firmly grasped with both feet, and torn apart, before it is 

 bolted. Since owls swallow skins, bones, and all, these in- 

 digestible parts are afterward ejected in pellets. Disturb 

 the owls at their orgy, and they chck their biUs and hiss in 

 the most successful attempt they ever make to be ferocious. 

 They are not quarrelsome even among themselves when 

 feeding, and the smallest songster can safely tease them to 

 a point that would goad a less amiable bird to rashness. 

 A querulous, quavering cry frequently repeated, k-r-r-r-r-r- 

 r-ik, suggesting the night jar's call, is sometimes more 

 frequently heard than the wild, peevish scream usually 

 associated with this owl. 



In spite of civihzation's tempting offers, a hollow tree 

 has ever remained the favorite home of the barn owl, that 

 nevertheless deserves its name, for barns and other out- 

 buildings on the farm, steeples, and abandoned dove cots 

 become equally dear to it once they have sheltered a brood. 

 A pair of these owls nested for years in one of the towers of 



