The owl is blessed with an appetite that would do credit to an alderman. Lord Lilford states that he saw “a young half-grown barn owl take down nine full-grown mice, one after another, until the tail of the ninth stuck out of his mouth, and in three hours’ time was crying for more.” Let me anticipate the captious critic by saying that it was the owl and not the tail of the ninth mouse that, like Oliver Twist, called for more. Moreover, the tail did not, as might be supposed, stick out because the bird was “full up inside.” The barn owl invariably swallows a mouse head first; it makes a mighty gulp, with the result that the whole of the mouse, except the tail, disappears. Thus the victim remains for a short time in order that the owl may enjoy the bonne bouche. Then the tail disappears suddenly, and the curtain is rung down on the first act of the tragedy. The second and third acts are like unto the first. The last act is not very polite, but it must be described in the interests of science. After an interval of a few hours the owl throws up, in the form of a pellet, the bones, fur, and other undigestible portions of his victims. This is, of course, very bad manners, but it is the inevitable result of bolting a victim whole. One vice, alas! leads to another.
Kingfishers, which swallow whole fish, likewise eject the bones. This habit of the owl has enabled zoologists to disprove the contention of the gamekeeper that the barn owl lives chiefly upon young pheasants. The bones found in these pellets are nearly all those of small rodents.
The screech owl, as its name implies, is not a great songster. It hisses, snores, and utters, during flight, blood-curdling screams, which doubtless account for its evil reputation. It lays roundish white eggs in a hole in a tree or other convenient cavity. Three, four, or six are laid, according to taste. I have never found the eggs in India, but they are, in England at any rate, laid, not in rapid succession, but at considerable intervals, so that one may find, side by side in a nest, eggs and young birds of various ages. I do not know whether the owl derives any benefit from this curious habit. It has been suggested that the wily creature makes the first nestling which hatches out do some of the incubating. Pranks of this kind are all very well when the nest is hidden away in a hole; they would not do in an open nest to which crows and other birds of that feather have access.
THE COMMON KINGFISHER. (ALCEDO ISPIDA)
(One of the British birds found in India)
A TREE-TOP TRAGEDY
If I were a bird I would give the Indian crow a very wide berth, and, whenever I did come into unavoidable contact with him, I should behave towards him with the most marked civility. A clannishness prevails among crows which makes them nasty enemies to tackle. If you insult one of the “treble-dated” birds you find that the whole of the corvi of the neighbourhood resent that insult as if it had been addressed to each and every one individually, and if you get back nothing more than your insult plus very liberal interest, you are indeed lucky. In the same way, crows will revenge an injury tenfold. The eye-for-an-eye doctrine does not satisfy them; for an eye they want at least a pair of eyes, to say nothing of a complete set of teeth. I recently witnessed an example of what crows are capable of doing by way of revenge.
A couple of kites built high up in a lofty tree the clumsy platform of sticks which we dignify by the name “nest.” This was furnished, soon after its completion, by a clutch of three straw-coloured eggs, handsomely blotched with red.
The ugliest birds seem to lay the most beautiful eggs; this is perhaps the compensation which Dame Nature gives them for their own lack of comeliness.
The kite is a very close sitter. Like the crow, she knoweth the wickedness of her own heart, and as she judges others by herself, deems it necessary to continually mount guard over her eggs. Patience eventually meets with its reward. Three weeks of steady sitting result in the appearance of the young kites.