THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 293 
like the whistle of escaping steam. Again and again the shadow came 
and went. Then I crept into the barn, felt my way up and edged 
along the rafters to the old box. As soon as food was brought, I lit 
a match and saw one of the half-grown young tearing the head from 
the body of a young gopher. 
Barn owls are always hungry. They will eat their own weight in 
food every night and more, if they can get it. To supply such raven 
ous children, their parents ransack the gardens, fields and orchards 
industriously night after night and catch as many mice, gophers and 
other ground creatures as a dozen cats. For this reason, it would be 
difficult to find birds that are more useful about any farming com- 
munity. Yet many times people kill these owls through ignorance of 
their value, or from idle curiosity. 
A case is on record where a half-grown barn owl was given all 
the mice it could eat. It swallowed eight, one after another, and the 
ninth followed, all but the tail, which for a long time hung out of the 
bird’s mouth. In three hours this same bird was ready for a second 
meal and swallowed four more mice. 
The owl is not particular when he eats. He puts his feet on his 
game to hold it, then tears it to pieces with his hooked beak, swallow- 
inf the entire animal, meat, bones, fur and all. In the stomach the 
nutritious portions are absorbed and the indigestible matter is formed 
into round pellets and disgorged. About the owl’s roost or near its 
home, one may often find these pellets in great numbers. A scientist, 
by examining these, can tell exactly what the bird has been eating. 
He can also get a careful estimate of the size and number of the owl’s 
meals, 
The best known record we have concerning the food of the barn 
owl is that which was made from a pair that occupied one of the 
towers of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C. Dr. A. K. 
Fisher, who is our greatest authority on the food of hawks and owls, 
examined 200 pellets from this pair of birds. These showed a total 
of 454 skulls. There were 225 meadow mice, 2 pine mice, 179 house 
mice, 20 rats, 6 jumping mice, 20 shrews, 1 star-nosed mole and 1 
vesper sparrow. 
FACTS ABOUT CLATSOP COUNTY GAME 
By WARDEN JOHN LARSON, Astoria, Oregon 
indications are that we will have more ducks this coming fall 
than for several years. The closing of the open season two weeks in 
January gave the ducks a chance to go back to their breeding place 
unmolested, thus making it possible for more ducks to come north when 
the season opens this fall. I look for a big migration of ducks on the 
Columbia River lakes this fall. 
The trout fishing has been reported very favorable in Big Creek, 
and in several other smaller streams. Weather conditions have been 
pretty bad this season and the water awful high, but now it is falling 
in all the streams and I look forward to good fishing during the 
balance of the season. 
The salmon fishing has been below the average this year, 
because of the rapid rising of the Columbia River, causing the fish 
to stay outside at the mouth of the river. As soon as the river 
comes to a standstill the fish will enter. I am looking forward for 
big runs of salmon because the trollers report that there are large 
schools of fish out in the ocean waiting to enter the Columbia. . 
G ina conditions in Clatsop County are improving yearly. The 
