af of corn. Here it sits, bolt upright, all eyes. It
sees a rat emerge from the grass and advance slowly, as it feeds, into
open ground. There is no hurry, for the doom of that rat is already
fixed. So the owl just sits and watches till the right moment has
arrived; then it flits swiftly, softly, silently, across the intervening
space and drops like a flake of snow. Without warning, or suspicion of
danger, the rat feels eight sharp claws buried in its flesh. It protests
with frantic squeals, but these are stopped with a nip that crunches its
skull, and the owl is away with it to the old tower, where the hungry
children are calling, with weird, impatient hisses, for something to
eat.

The owl does not hunt the fields and hedgerows only. It goes to all
places where rats or mice may be, reconnoitres farmyards, barns and
dwelling houses and boldly enters open windows. Sometimes it hovers in
the air, like a kestrel, scanning the ground below. And though its
regular hunting hours are from dusk till dawn, it has been seen at work
as late as nine or ten on a bright summer morning. But the vulgar boys
of bird society are fond of mobbing it when it appears abroad by day,
and it dislikes publicity.

The barn owl lays its eggs in the places which it inhabits. There is
usually a thick bed of pellets on the floor, and it considers no other
nest needful. The eggs are said to be laid in pairs. There may be two,
four, or six, of different eggs, in the nest, and perhaps a young one,
or two, at the same time. Eggs are found from April, or even March, till
June or July, and there is, sometimes at any rate, a second brood as
late as November or December. This owl does not hoot, but screeches. A
weird and ghostly voice it is, from which, according to Ovid, the bird
has its Latin name, Strix (pronounced "Streex," probably, at that time).

Est illis strigibus nomen, sed nominis hujus.
Causa, quod horrenda stridere nocte silent.

It is a sound which, coming suddenly out of the darkness, might well
start fears and forebodings in the dark and guilty mind of untutored
man, which would not be dispelled by a nearer view of the strange object
from which they proceeded. White, ghostly, upright, spindle-shaped and
biggest at the top, where two great orbs flare, like fiery bull's-eyes,
from the centres of two round white targets, it stands solemn and
speechless; you approach nearer and it falls into fearsome pantomimic
attitudes and grimaces, li