Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/117

 from one of the chimneys, and all apprehension was not dispelled until owls of this species, which had a nest there, were discovered to be the snorers. The young have been seen in the evening flying to the battlements of the castle, where they kept up a snor- ing noise, until the old birds came and fed them.* In the county of Wexford, its nest has been found in a hollow tree.f The white owl is a well-known visitor to the dove-cot, — though not with the evil intent commonly imagined, — and in such a place, or rather a loft appropriated to pigeons in the town of Belfast, an observant friend informs me that a pair once had their nest, con- taining four young, which were brought up at the same time with many pigeons. The nests containing the latter were on every side, but the owls never attempted to molest either the parents or their young. As may be conjectured, this owl's nest was fre- quently inspected during the progress of the young birds. On the shelf beside them, never less than six, and as many as fifteen mice and young rats have been observed (no birds were ever seen), this too being the number left after their night's repast. The parent owls, when undisturbed, remained all day in the pigeon- loft. Mr. Waterton, in an admirable essay on this species, strongly urges the great good it does by the destruction of mice and allied vermin ; as Sir William Jardine, in his full and excel- lent account of it, does also. J In St. John's Wild Sports of the Highlands, the great service rendered to the farmer, &c, by owls, is likewise fully expatiated on, p. 66–67. The localities, indeed, in which we chiefly find this species in towns, bear circum- stantial evidence of this fact. These are, to my own knowledge, grain stores, breweries, &c, wherever mice and rats particularly abound.

Of the stomachs of four white owls examined by me, one contained the remains of rats ; another, of mice ; a third was filled to distension with portions of eight mice; and the fourth exhibited only an imperfect coleopterous insect of the family Harpalidæ,

Mr. Robert Warren, junr.

t Mr. J. Poole. See Jardine's Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 254.

X Brit. Birds, vol. i. p. 256.