Mn LiffJp Owls. 
183 
Diet and general treatment call for no romment be- 
yond lia>=; boon said n prnpns of the Cordon Bleu. 
Mo^t birds are beautiful ; ail are interestinj?, but none 
more so than the two examples which it has been my joy 
and privilege to breed and describe in this short article. I 
hope it may be of interest to some and help to others. I am 
always fearful of making it too long, but I hardlv dare trust 
myself with pen and paper when writing about my .sweet 
little feathered friends. If I am a Ijore,. please forgive me. 
[To be continued) . 
♦ 
My Little Owls (Athene noctua). 
By The Mauqi'is of Tavistock. 
{Continued from p. 159). 
Errata: Page 155, line 10, for "slipping" read dipping. 
Page 156, last line, for " in capsule " read in a capsule. 
Page 158, line 16, for "caches" read cache.'i. 
Peeps had one drawback as a pet — he was desperately 
shy of strangers, and consequently would never show off when 
they were present. Even people he saw constantly he would not 
trust except perhaps my servant, who often brought his food and 
on whose shoulder he would, when hungry, sometimes condescend 
to alight. He did, it is true, become perfectly tame, in his 
early days, with a lady who fed and looked after him at a 
time when I was away from home : but he transferred 
his affection back to me on my return and viewed her with 
increasing suspicion for the rest of his life, in spite of the 
kindness she always showed him. In early autumn Peeps 
moulted his immature plumage (the head of a young bird is 
plain greyish brown; that of an old one is spotted with yellow- 
ish white) and by the beginning of December he looked quite 
a fine grown-up bird. I may say that my Little Owls, besides 
undergoing a moult in the late summer, also cast and 
renewed a number of their wing and tail feathers in 
March. I do not know whether this is a normal habit or 
whether it was the result of captivity. Both Peeps and his 
successor " Kirrie " used regularly to lose part of the "tip 
of the upper mandible (which had by that time grown rather 
