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NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER XV. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. , 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, July 8, 1773. 
Some young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of 
Wolmer-forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of 
which they caught, and among the rest, some very minute yet 
well-fledged wild-fowls alive, which upon examination I found 
to be teals, I did not know till then that teals ever bred in the 
south 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 oflf- 
spring. But a piece of address, which they show when they re- 
turn 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 ne-st : 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 snore and hiss in a 
* And not unfrequently the winter also, the breeding period of these birds much resembling 
that of the domestic pigeon. Indeed, few birds evince so great an aptitude for domestication as 
the white owl, and none are more eminently serviceable to man as destroyers of mice, and even 
rats, while they are perfectly harmless towards poultry.— Ed. 
