Country Life Ax OWLISH INSTINCT.
One of the strangest byways of instinct—or reason !—in birds was explored a few years ago in the ancient demesne owned by Sir George Courthope in Sussex. It is one of the most English places in England. Its oak forests—from which Westminster Hall was built centuries ago and repaired in this— and its owners have a continuous history remarkable even in English annals ; and to-day as at the beginning the instru- ments and apparatus of the estate, even to the carts and wagons, are manufactured locally out of the estate timber. Doubtless the early landowner watched birds with as shrewd a curiosity as its present owner ; but did any of them discover so strange a habit ? Probably not ; for in those days unwel- come birds were not introduced from abroad. Dr. Collinge, specialist on the food of birds, denied that the little owl ate young birds or.birds' eggs. So Sir George Courthope cancelled an order or a permission for their destruction. Then an observant keeper saw one of these whitewashed owls destroy at one attack seventeen young pheasants ; but it left them lying where they fell. Presently it returned with some com- panions and they together carried off the bodies. Watchers observed them depoSit a number of these on a damp meadow, where they were let lie for some days. By this time busying beetles, those native scavengers, got to their proper work ; and at this juncture the little owls returned and ate the beetles which were alleged by Dr. Collinge to be their favourite food. He was justified ; but so were the keepers who asserted that the owls were ruinous to young game birds.
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