One day in the course of the investigation of the
mystery a Spanish owl was heard cackling and seen sitting on the top of a coop, proclaiming murder. It had just killed sixteen small pheasant chicks. Now the owls attack the coops not singly but in groups. On this occasion three birds were especially concerned, and between them they presently carried off all the sixteen dead chicks and laid them at different spots on a low-lying stretch of land that is half-covert alongside a stream. The observers discovered the whereabouts of most of the sixteen bodies ; and kept watch in their vicinity. The owls did not revisit their prey till the burying beetles began
to attack the bodies. Thereafter they visited them at inter- vals, on each occasion devouring every discoverable beetle, often turning over the body to search them out. On no single occasion has any flesh been found in any of the several hundred owls killed on the estate ; and almost every post mortem investigation at certain dates has revealed a number of the upper wing cases of burying beetles.
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