Part 50

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No fewer than three exotic cuckoos have been placed on the list of British birds. Two of these are American species: the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) and the black-billed cuckoo (C. erythrophthalmus). The third is the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius), an African species, which visits Spain in summer, and, like our bird, is parasitical, but has the habit of depositing its eggs in the nests of various species of the crow family.

Barn-Owl.

Strix flammea.

Beak yellowish white; upper parts light tawny yellow minutely variegated with brown, grey, and white; face and lower plumage white, the feathers of the margin tipped with brown. Length, fourteen inches.

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The barn-owl is one of the very few species that have almost a world-wide range. It is resident throughout the British Islands, and inhabits the greater part of Europe; it extends to Africa, including Madagascar; to India and America, and to the Malaysian, Australian, and Polynesian regions; and is found in islands so widely separated and far removed from the mainland as the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape de Verde. The short-eared owl has a distribution just as wide, or even wider; but that bird, wherever found, is of a wandering habit, making his home and breeding-place wherever food is abundant, and staying not where it fails him. His action resembles, only on a vaster scale, that of the nomads of the human race, who break up their camp and move away from the district that no longer affords pasture to their cattle. Thus, in the case of this species, the vagrant habit may be held to account for so extensive a range. But the barn-owl’s universality cannot be accounted for in the same way, since he is, in most countries, a stay-at-home bird, and spends his whole life, from year’s end to year’s end, in the same spot. We can only conjecture that at some former and very remote period in the history of his species he, too, had a vagrant disposition; or else that he is a very ancient bird on the earth, and has had unlimited time to get so widely dispersed; also, that the barn-owl is one of those rare types that can exist unaltered in a great variety of conditions. One of our domestic birds, the goose, affords an instance of the unchangeableness of some types in all regions of the globe; but the goose has been carried everywhere by adventurous white men, while the barn-owl, by means unknown to us, has distributed himself over the earth.

Another general remark about this most strange and fascinating fowl may be made in this place. The barn-owl, being so widely distributed, and in many countries the most common species, and being, furthermore, the only member of its order that attaches itself by preference to human habitations, and is a dweller in towns as well as in rural districts, is probably the chief inspirer and object of the innumerable ancient owl superstitions which still flourish in all countries among the ignorant. His blood-curdling voice, his whiteness, and extraordinary figure, and, when viewed by day on his perch in some dim interior, his luminous eyes and great round face, and wonderful intimidating gestures and motions, must powerfully affect the primitive mind, for in that low intellectual state whatever is strange is regarded as supernatural.

Before sitting down to write this little history I went out into the woods, and was so fortunate as to hear three owls calling with unearthly shrieks to one another from some large fir-trees under which I was standing, and, listening to them, it struck me as only natural that in so many regions of the earth this bird should have been, and should still be, regarded as an evil being, a prophet of disaster and death.

The barn-owl takes up his abode by preference in a building of some kind--an old ruin, a loft in a barn or an outhouse; but above most sites he prefers an ivyclad church-tower, on which account he has been called the church-owl. He also inhabits caves and holes in cliffs, and hollow trees in woods. He spends the daylight hours, standing upright and motionless, dozing on his perch; and, where he is persecuted, he does not stir abroad until dark. When he is not molested he leaves his hiding-place before sunset, and is so little suspicious of man as to appear like a domestic bird in his presence. He preys on mice, rats, moles, insects, and even fish, which he has been observed to take in his claws from lakes and ponds. The indigestible portions of the small animals he swallows--the fur, feathers, bones, wing-cases, and scales--are disgorged in compact round pellets about the size of a cob-nut; and from an examination of a vast number of such pellets, it would appear that about nine-tenths of the food of this owl consists of mice.

This fact is now so generally known that the owl, from being one of the most persecuted of birds, is becoming a general favourite; and farmers who formerly shot it, and nailed it, with outspread wings, to their barn-doors, in order that all might see and admire their zeal in ridding the earth of so misshapen a pest, are now only anxious to have the ‘feathered cats’ living in their barns again.

The owl makes no nest, and lays from two to six eggs, which are white and nearly round. It has the curious habit of laying two or three eggs, and, long after incubation has begun, laying others, and then others again, so that young of different ages and eggs not yet near hatching may be found in the nest together. The young make a curious snoring noise, which is their hunger cry; and it has been said that this cry is also occasionally uttered by the old bird on the wing.

Long-eared Owl.

Asio otus.

Beak blackish; eyes orange-yellow; upper parts buff, finely mottled with brown and grey, and streaked with dark brown, especially on the ear-tufts; facial disk buff, with a greyish black margin and outer rim; under parts warm buff and grey, with blackish streaks and minute transverse bars. Length, fifteen inches.

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The long-eared owl may be described as a bird of beautiful plumage. The hues of the upper parts--various shades of yellow, buff, and brown, harmoniously disposed--and something, too, in the indeterminate pattern, remind us of the colouring of some of the very handsome cats. This cat-like colouring, long tufts of ear-like feathers, and large, round, fiery, yellow eyes, give the bird a singular and uncanny appearance. As a vocalist he is less interesting than the two other most common British species--the white owl, with its sepulchral shriek, and the tawny owl, with its mellow hoot--that mysterious sound of the deep woods at eventide. The commonest note of the present species is a mewing cry, heard when the birds begin to stir from their hiding-places before going out to forage. It also emits at times a short, barking cry.

The long-eared owl appears to be more gregarious than other species, except, perhaps, the short-eared owl. Mr. Abel Chapman writes: ‘A peculiarity of the habits of these owls after the breeding-season deserves a remark. As soon as the young were fledged the whole of the owls associated together, perhaps three or four broods, old and young, in a single family, and chose a thick black Scotch fir for their abode. Here they all passed the day. To this particular tree the whole of the owl-life of these woods resorted regularly at dawn, and in it slept away the hours of daylight, hidden amongst the deep evergreen recesses. At the particular tree of their choice (it varied in different years) the owls could invariably be interviewed during the summer and autumn, though to a casual eye it was difficult, amidst the deep shadows of the foliage, to distinguish their slim forms, pressed closely against the brown branches of the pine. Towards dusk their awakening was notified by the querulous cat-like cry; ten minutes later their silent forms appeared outside the wood, and, after a few rounds of preliminary gyrations, it was dark enough to commence operations in earnest.’

Field-mice and rats are its principal food; it also preys a good deal on insects, and kills more small birds than does the white owl. It is an early breeder, laying its eggs in the deserted nest of a crow, magpie, rook, or heron, or in a squirrel’s drey, or even making use of the slight platform-nest of the wood-pigeon. The eggs are four to six in number, nearly round in shape, and have smooth white shells.

Short-eared Owl.

Asio brachyotus.

Face whitish; beak black; iris yellow; tufts on the head small, composed of black feathers; eyes encircled by brownish black; upper parts dusky brown edged with yellow; under parts dull yellow streaked with brown. Length, fifteen inches.

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In its habits the short-eared owl offers a strong contrast to the species last described. It is a bird of the moors and fens, laying its eggs on the ground, and never, or very seldom, perches on trees. In appearance it is less owl-like and uncanny-looking than the long-eared owl, the colouring and markings being less rich, the head smaller, and the ear-tufts so small that at a distance of twenty-five yards they are scarcely visible. It is migratory in its habits, and as it arrives on the east coast at the same time as the woodcock, it is often called the woodcock-owl.

As a winter visitant it is found in most places in the British Islands, but it breeds with us only in Scotland and a few localities in the north of England. As I have said in the history of the barn-owl, the present species ranges over a large portion of the globe, and on the continent of America it is found from Greenland to the Straits of Magellan. It is not so nocturnal in its habits as the majority of owls, and may often be seen, an hour or two before sunset, beating over the rough ground like a hen harrier in search of prey. It feeds on small rodents of all kinds, and on birds. The eggs are three to five in number, and in some instances as many as seven or eight are laid, and are placed in a slight clearing among the herbage on marshy ground, or under the heather on a moor.

There is some variety in the language of this species: it hisses and makes a sharp clicking sound when angry, and has a loud, startling cry, a note repeated three or four times, like a ghostly laugh; and it also hoots, this performance sounding like the baying of a dog in the distance.

An interesting and curious fact in the history of this owl is that it is known to appear, often in considerable numbers, in any district where, owing to a great increase of field-mice or other small rodents, its favourite food is for the time abundant. This phenomenon has been observed in various parts of the world, in this country on several occasions; and during the late great plague of short-tailed voles in the south of Scotland (1891–92), large numbers of short-eared owls appeared, and remained to breed in the district. As long as the plague lasted they remained in the country, and were most prolific. When the voles disappeared the owls departed.

Tawny Owl.