OWLS AND TRAGEDIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19418, 28 August 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

OWLS AND TRAGEDIES.

CREATURES OF THE NIGHT. FIERCENESS AND CAPRICE. A CAT MEETS ITS DEATH. The caprice and fierceness which mark the ways of animals that have young ones to rear have their counterpart in the attitude of nesting birds. A dove is as a little dragon is defence of its eggs. Let us therefore view with charity the errors of the owls, which just now are worried by the care of their young ones, says an English naturalist in an article in the Children's Newspaper. *> On two successive nights lately have been sensations from this cause. First there was a scene in an open street, where a big owl pounced down on a cat arid seized it in its fearsome talons. There was a long battle, for cats are rare fighters when brought to bay; but the bird proved the victor, inflicting injuries from which the cat died. It is supposed that in this case the owl intended to carry off the cat as food. But what an appetite it must have had—and what astounding courage! Then there is a story from Bedfordshire, where a well-known antiquary, returning from an evening walk, was suddenly assailed from the air, an owl being again the assailant. His cap was buffeted from his head and the creature's talons inflicted severe scalp wounds before a stick beat it off. The explanation of this seemingly wanton attack was that the owl had young ones in a nest near by, and that jealousy and fear prompted it to strike. Attacks on Love Birds. Next picture a fine open-air aviary, where birds of many species were born and thrived. 1 Among the most successful were budgerigars, or love birds. It always happened that on the first night the young ones issued from their nests, to which they never return, they 'clung through the hours of darkness to the outer wires of the aviary, never afterwards, but just that one night, until they learned their bearings. Again and again young dead budgerigars were found on the ground of the aviary in the morning, with clean-cut round holes through their throats. It would be too long a story to tell of the theories these tragedies suggested, but the present writer had a suspicion, and, hiding one night as new bud-* gerigars clung as ustial to the wires, he saw a huge tawny owl descend from the air, with talons outstretched to grip the little ones' throats. The owl could just get its claws through the small mesh of the wire, just grasp a little bird's neck and kill it. It, was a prim discovery, for the owl and for the observer. Kent recently witnessed another owl tragedy,' but of quite another kind. It was necessary for one of the "New Poor" to call in an auctioneer to sell some antique furniture and china. Alas! the beautiful china lay in ruins, smashed to fragments by an owl. • t Fall Down the Chimney.

Something unexplained had frightened the owl down the chimney; perhaps it had fallen, perhaps it had been detected in daylight and mobbed down by lesser birds. Whaitever the cause, down the chimney it fell, and entered the room, smashing the china .in its terror. Pieces which immediately before had been worth hundreds of pounds in the auction mart were now a miserable wreck, a blinded owl's unconscious addition of misfortune to the house which . had sheltered it. " Here, then," adds the writer, "is a title chapter of owl tragedies. Yet, in spite of all, let us say not a word against these birds. No bird of prey in the world is of greater value, to civilisation. If its courage a -mad turn—well, the,owl' is; not'.-the only -living thing which has the' defects of its qualities. Even man has that. The record of the owl through the long story of time i 3 vastly in. its favour. It was not without good cause that the wise Greeks exalted this above all other birds."