Burrowing Owl
“I had always thought,” said Louis, “that cats could see in pitch-darkness.”
“Others think so too, but they are much mistaken. The cat can no more distinguish objects, if light is totally lacking, than any other creature can. It has an advantage over us, I grant you: it has large eyes, the pupils of which it can contract and almost close when it finds itself exposed to a bright [[94]]light that would otherwise dazzle it, or open wide to receive more of the feeble light diffused in a dark room. These large eyes enable it to find its way in places which to us, with our poorer sight, seem pitch-dark. But in reality the darkness is not complete where a cat can manage to see well enough for its purposes. If light is totally lacking, the cat may open its eyes as wide as possible, but it will see nothing, absolutely nothing. In this particular, nocturnal birds do not differ from the cat: their large eyes, made for seeing in a dim light, can see nothing whatever when the night is perfectly dark.
“Now let us follow the bird in its hunt. The night is a fine one for hunting; the air is calm, the moon shining. The hunt begins with a lugubrious war-cry. At that dreaded signal the tomtit hardly feels safe even in the deepest hollow of its tree, the redbreast trembles beneath its shelter of thick foliage, and the finch loses its head with fright. God of the weak, God of the little birds, protect them now! Make the owl, enraged as it still is from the insults of the day, miss them in its search! Blessed be Thy holy name if the rapacious bird turns in some other direction! It skirts the groves and skims over the open plain and the plowed fields. It inspects the furrows where the field-mouse crouches, the stretches of grass-land where the mole burrows, the tumble-down buildings in which rats and mice scamper to and fro. Its flight is silent, its soft wings cleaving the air without making the slightest sound to awaken its intended victims. This noiselessness of flight is due [[95]]to the structure of the bird’s feathers, which are soft as silk and of finest texture. Nothing gives warning of its sudden coming: the prey is seized even before it has suspected the nearness of the enemy. The owl, on the contrary, with its exceptional acuteness of hearing, is kept informed of all that is going on in the neighborhood, its large, deep ears detecting even the rustle of a field-mouse in the grass. If the mouse begins to nibble a rootlet or a grain of wheat, the bird hears the sound of its incisors and pounces on it immediately.
“The prey is seized by two strong claws warmly gloved in down as far as the roots of the nails. Each foot has four toes, three pointing habitually forward, and one backward; but, by a privilege peculiar to nocturnal birds of prey, one of the front toes is movable and can be turned back so that the set of talons is divided into two pairs of equal power whenever the bird wishes to grip, as in a vise, the branch on which it perches, or the victim struggling in its grasp. One blow of the beak breaks the head of the captured creature. This beak is short and very hooked. The two mandibles move with great ease, which enables them, in striking against each other, to give out a sharp rattling sound or clicking by which the bird expresses anger or fright. They stretch wide at the moment of swallowing, exposing a big opening leading into a very large gullet. When they are thus opened, the prey, which has already been kneaded into a compact mass between the claws, disappears entirely as if swallowed [[96]]up by an abyss. All goes down, including bones and hair. Not a trace is left of the field-mouse, not even its coat of fur. But a single victim is seldom enough, and so the hunt continues. More mice follow the first one, and all are first killed by a peck on the head, all are swallowed whole. If the bird chances upon a fat beetle, he does not disdain it. It is a small mouthful, to be sure, but highly flavored with spices that will aid digestion. At last, having eaten all it possibly can, the owl returns to its lodging in the hollow of some rock, or in a decayed tree trunk, or in some ruined building.
“Now follows digestion. Motionless in the quiet of its peaceful solitude, the bird gently closes its eyes to dream of the fine exploits it has just achieved and to plan others for the following night. Its slumbers are deep and long. In the meantime the stomach does its work. The food swallowed without any preparation or sorting must be divided into two parts, that which is really nutritious and that which is worthless. With the aid of its gastric juice the stomach carefully separates the bones and skins from the nutritious part of its contents. The flesh thus made semi-fluid disappears, to be converted into blood, and a confused mass remains, composed of skins turned inside out and wearing all their fur, bones as clean as if they had been scraped with a knife, and the hard wing-covers of beetles. This bulky mass could not be passed on by the stomach without danger. How then will the bird get rid of it? Let us watch and find out. Ah, the owl is waking up! [[97]]Grotesque heavings of the body denote trouble within. The disturbance increases, something ascends through the outstretched neck, the beak opens, and it is all over: there drops to the ground a ball containing skins, bones, scales, fur, feathers—in fact, the entire mass of indigestible matter.
“All nocturnal birds of prey practise this undignified method of freeing the stomach: they throw up in a ball the rejected remnants of what they have swallowed whole. If you ever find yourself near an owl’s retreat, examine the ground beneath it: the balls of little bones and hair will tell you from how many mice and other rodents of all kinds these birds deliver us.”
“I have seen some of those balls near a rock all white with bird-dung,” said Louis.
“Some owl certainly lived there. It was responsible for the dung and the balls of refuse that you saw.” [[98]]