THE WHITE; OR BARN OWL. 
93 
from one of the chimneys, and all apprehension was not dispelled 
until owls of this species, which had a nest there, were discovered 
to be the snorers. The young have been seen in the evening 
flying to the battlements of the castle, where they kept up a snor- 
ing noise, until the old birds came and fed them.* In the county 
of Wexford, its nest has been found in a hollow tree.f The 
white owl is a well-known visitor to the dove-cot, — though not 
with the evil intent commonly imagined, — and in such a place, or 
rather a loft appropriated to pigeons in the town of Belfast, an 
observant friend informs me that a pair once had their nest, con- 
taining four young, which were brought up at the same time with 
many pigeons. The nests containing the latter were on every 
side, but the owls never attempted to molest either the parents or 
their young. As may be conjectured, this owl's nest was fre- 
quently inspected during the progress of the young birds. On 
the shelf beside them, never less than six, and as many as fifteen 
mice and young rats have been observed (no birds were ever seen), 
this too being the number left after their night's repast. The 
parent owls, when undisturbed, remained all day in the pigeon- 
loft. Mr. Waterton, in an admirable essay on this species, 
strongly urges the great good it does by the destruction of mice 
and allied vermin ; as Sir William Jar dine, in his full and excel- 
lent account of it, does also. J In St. John's Wild Sports of 
the Highlands, the great service rendered to the farmer, &c., by 
owls, is likewise fully expatiated on, p. 66-67. The localities, 
indeed, in which we chiefly find this species in towns, bear circum- 
stantial evidence of this fact. These are, to my own knowledge, 
grain stores, breweries, &c., wherever mice and rats particularly 
abound. 
Of the stomachs of four white owls examined by me, one 
contained the remains of rats ; another, of mice ; a third was filled 
to distension with portions of eight mice; and the fourth exhibited 
only an imperfect coleopterous insect of the family Harpalida, 
* Mr. Robert Warren, junr. 
f Mr. J. Poole. See Jardine’s Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 254. 
t Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 256. 
