NOCTURNAL BIRDS OF PREY 299 



innutritions matter. Grotesque retchings indicate 

 the labor of this deliverance. Something makes its 

 way upward through the extended throat, the beak 

 opens, and the act is accomplished. A rounded mass 

 falls to the ground, composed of skins, bones, hair, 

 •scales — in fact, everything that has defied diges- 

 tion. All nocturnal birds of prey have this ignoble 

 manner of freeing the stomach : they vomit in globu- 

 lar form the residue of their prey after the latter has 

 been swallowed whole." 



