248 OWLS 



deserves attention. Unlike its cousin the short-eared owl, 

 the long-eared owl does not hunt by day, and it remains 

 in this country all the year round. Its misdeeds, if any, 

 are performed under cloud of night, which makes it pro- 

 portionately difficult to catch it flagrante delicto. What 

 is the evidence upon which these Welsh gamekeepers have 

 condemned it to death? Purely circumstantial, and as 

 slender as that which might be produced to account for 

 the prevalence of appendicitis by the number of omnibuses 

 in Piccadilly. It amounts to no more than this, that 

 during the present season in North Wales there are fewer 

 snipe than usual, and as many, or more, long-eared owls. 

 Have you a woodland beside a snipe bog ? It is certain 

 to contain long-eared owls, by reason of the abundance of 

 small rodents in marshy ground. 



I now come to my point — the point which it is dis- 

 creditable to the intelligence of any person professing to a 

 knowledge of wild creatures to evade. So far from circum- 

 stantial evidence only being available as to the diet of 

 owls, it happens to be impossible for these birds to disguise 

 or conceal the nature thereof. Like the falcons, aU owls 

 eject from the mouth the indigestible parts of their food 

 such as the bones, fur, feathers, wing-cases of insects, and, 

 so on, in the form of ' pelts,' or elongated pellets. These 

 pelts may be collected under the roosting-places of the 

 owls, and when placed in warm water disclose precisely 

 what the bird has captured and eaten during the four-and- 

 twenty hours preceding ejection. I shall never forget 

 the state of the floor of a young fir-wood on Eskdale 

 moor during the vole plague in 1892. It was thickly 

 covered with the pelts of both long and short-eared owls, 

 and these pelts consisted exclusively of the dibris of voles. 



