THE LITTLE OWL 39 
they obtained large numbers of these owls, and 
liberated them in the hope that they would breed 
and multiply. Their hopes have been more than 
justified, for they did at once settle down and 
increase; they passed first from the county they 
were liberated in to the adjoining county of 
Huntingdon ; then, spreading over that, they ex- 
tended their area into Cambridgeshire, then on 
into Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk. Every one was 
at first delighted, and keepers were given strict 
injunctions on no account to worry the new- 
comers; but gradually the keepers’ faces began to 
get long, and first one and then another reported 
strange stories of depleted coops shortly after. the 
foster-hen was put out into the open with her 
_ family of ten or more young birds. Ornithologists 
were scandalised at these stories—an owl take a 
young game-bird: impossible !—but what is im- 
possible in the eyes of men of science has tumed 
- out to be a fact, and this charming-looking Little 
Owl is found to be one of the worst vermin on 
the whole list which vexes the soul of the game 
preserver. For it is just this, that at the very 
time the young pheasants or hand-reared partridges 
are put, out, the Little Owl has its own little 
family to feed; the foster-mother, the hen, being 
