, yet that animal, which the natives of
India know better than the men of any other race, has never figured in
their folklore as a type noted for its cunning. About the owl as we know
it to-day, with its spectacled face and blinking eyes, there is nothing
strikingly intelligent, and schoolboy slang, in which the word does duty
as synonymous with foolishness, discovers a more accurate appreciation
of these birds.

Seen at its worst, when surprised in the glare of daylight and mobbed by
a furious rabble of little birds, an owl looks a helpless fool indeed,
though this is not the proper moment to judge of the bird's
possibilities under happier circumstances. Why these small fowl should
bully it at all is one of those woodland problems that no one has yet
solved. The first, and obvious, explanation is that they know it for
their enemy, and it may be indeed that owls commit depredations on the
nests of wild birds of which we, who academically regard their food as
consisting of rats, bats and mice--or, in the case of larger species, of
young game and leverets--have no inkling. If however such is the case,
it is strange that the habit should have been overlooked by those who
have paid close attention to this curious and interesting group.
Bird-catchers, at any rate, without troubling to inquire into the
reason, turn the instinct to profitable account, and in some parts of
the country a stuffed owl is an important item of their stock-in-trade.

The majority of owls that either reside in or visit these islands are
benefactors of the farmer, and should be spared. The larger eagle-owl,
and snowy owl eat more expensive food, though, seeing that they come to
us--at any rate in the south country--only in winter, and even then
irregularly, they can do no damage to young game birds, and are probably
incapable of capturing old. The worst offender among the residents is
the tawny owl, to which I find the following reference in the famous
Malmesbury MSS.: "Common here ... a great destroyer of young game and
leverets ... they sit in ivy bushes during the day, and I have known one
remain, altho' its mate was killed, in the same tree, in such a state of
torpor did it appear to be...." The screech owl is a harmless bird and a
terror to mice, and any doubt as to its claim on the farmer's
hospitality would at once be removed by cursory examination of the
undigested pellets which, in common with hawks, these birds cast up
after their meals.