OF 8ELB0BNE. 
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know till tlien that teals ever bred in the soutli of England, 
and was much pleased with the discovery ; this I look upon 
as a great stroke in natural history.^ 
We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of 
white owls that constantly breed under the eaves of this 
church. As I have paid good attention to the manner of 
life of these birds during their season of breeding, which 
lasts the summer through, the following remarks may not 
perhaps be unacceptable : — About an hour before sunset 
(for then the mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest of 
prey, and hunt all round the hedges of meadows and small 
enclosures for them, which seem to be their only food. 
In this irregular country we can stand on an eminence and 
see them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and often 
drop down in the grass or corn. I have minuted these 
birds with my watch for an hour together, and have found 
that they return to their nest, the one or the other of them, 
about once in five minutes ; reflecting at the same time on 
the adroitness that every animal is possessed of as far as 
regards the well-being of itself and ofispring. But a piece 
of address, which they show when they return loaded, 
should not. I think, be passed over in silence. As they 
take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their 
claws to their nest ; but, as the feet are necessary in their 
ascent under the tiles, they constantly perch first on the 
roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their claws to 
their bill, that the feet may be at liberty to take hold of the 
plate on the wall as they are rising under the eaves. 
White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to 
hoot at all; all that clamorous hooting appears to me to 
come from the wood kinds.^ The white owl does indeed 
^ The teal still breeds in the neighbourhood of Wolmer (see p. 29, 
note 1), and the writer has repeatedly seen the nest eggs and young of 
this bird in the western portion of the adjoining county of Sussex. 
—Ed. 
2 Mr. Colquhoun, the author of " The Moor and the Loch," speaking 
of the white or barn owl, says : — " They do hoot, but very rarely. 
T heard one once six times in succession, and then it ceased." Sir 
William Jardine once shot a white owl in the very act of hooting ; and 
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