Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(183) THE BIRD WORLD. 
The Bowdon Owls. 
As in previous years, Owls have nested 
in a thickly populated part of Bowdon. 
They are barn Owls, but the nest is not 
in a barn but amongst the rafters of a 
gable. At one time an unsuccessful 
attempt was made to drive the birds 
away, but they were there again this year, 
and the young birds could be heard 
hissing for food from their perch on the 
gable-end after dark. The eggs of the 
barn Owl are not all hatched at once; 
many birds complete their clutch before 
they begin the task of incubation, but 
the Owl, like some of the Parrot tribe, 
sits as soon as the first egg is laid. 
The result is that the earlier young ones 
are ready to leave the nest before their 
brothers and sisters, and often the 
youngest of the family is- still calling for 
food at the end of August. Many 
people pass the house nightly, and 
either do not hear the curious hissing 
call of the young birds or pay no atten¬ 
tion to it; on the other hand, the re¬ 
putation of these Bowdon barn Owls is 
spreading amongst those who take an 
interest in birds. 
Birds and Their Digestive Powers. 
Birds can eat and digest from ten to 
thirty times as much food in proportion 
to their size as men can. If a man could 
eat as much in proportion to his size 
as a Sparrow is able to consume, he 
would need a whole sheep for dinner, 
a couple of dozen chickens for break¬ 
fast, and six turkeys for his evening 
meal. A tree Sparrow has been known 
to eat 700 grass seeds in a day. Re¬ 
lative to the bird’s size, these seeds were 
as big as an ordinary lunch basket would 
be to a full-grown man. A bird’s 
strength is equally amazing. A white¬ 
tailed Eagle, weighing twelve pounds, 
with a wing-spread of six feet, has been 
known to pounce on a pig weighing 
forty-two pounds, raise it to a height 
of one hundred feet, and fly off with it. 
The bird had covered a distance of half 
a mile before the pig’s owner succeeded 
in shooting the thief. Birds can do 
work far harder than human beings. 
A pair of house Martins, when nesting, 
will feed their young ones in twenty 
seconds—that is, each bird, male and 
female, makes ninety journeys to and 
fro in an hour, or about one thousand 
a day. It must be remembered that on 
each journey the bird has the added 
work of catching insects. Even so tiny 
a bird as the Wren has been counted to 
make no trips to and from its nest 
within 430 minutes ; and the prey carried 
home consisted of larger, heavier, and 
harder-to-find insects than were caught 
by the Sparrows. Among them were 
twenty good-sized caterpillars, ten grass¬ 
hoppers, seven spiders, eleven worms, 
and more than one fat chrysalis. 
The Range of the Merlin. 
This little Hawk is very locally dis¬ 
tributed throughout the country, and is, 
on the whole, not nearly so commonly 
met with as the Sparrow-Hawk or 
Kestrel. A short time ago a keeper 
found a nest of the species containing 
four eggs. The keeper’s cottage was 
situated on the edge of a moor, and the 
Merlin had nested only about 600 yards 
away. The nest was situated among 
long heather, at the, edge of a large 
stone; but, unfortunately, the heavy 
rain of the day before had apparently 
made the bird desert, as the eggs were 
found lying far apart and half-buried in 
the nest. There were, to all appear¬ 
ances, but three in the nest, and the 
fourth was found only after diligent 
scraping and searching. The nest was 
composed of heather shoots, dried grass, 
and moss, and a few feathers from the 
parent bird were lying about. The ex¬ 
posure was an easterly one, and gave 
a very wide outlook. Apparently the 
close proximity of a Hawk had no dis¬ 
turbing effect on the other birds on the 
hillside, as Ring-Ouzels, and Meadow- 
Pipits were quite numerous near the 
nest. 
