In her report, published recently, Miss Hibbert-Ware gives a. flat denial to the three main charges which have been levelled against the bird. The charges and her answers are:—Is the Little Owl a menace to British song-birds.
No. Hardly any birds are eaten except in the resting season from April to- August. During that time there is an appreciable toll of starlings and house-sparrows, and to a less extent of blackbirds and song-thrushes, but in any normal condition destruction of other species is negligible The Little Owl does not appear at the present time either to raid nests or feed on birds in such large numbers as to be harmful to the species that form its prey.
Is the Little Owl a menace to game land poultry?
No. Only a single pheasant chick was found among the whole of the material collected, while the seven poultry chicks recorded were all kiled on a single poultry farm.
Does the Little Owl kill birds and mammals in order to come back and feed on cation beetles attracted to the corpses?
No. This story, perhaps the most fantastic legend recently started about any animal, runs counter to all the evidence available, and, incidentally, to the known limitations of a bird's mind, which is almost certainly incapable of any such forethought. It the habit prevailed, burying beetles would occur frequently in the Little Owl's food actually. only 75 were found during the whole inquiry, and eight was the largest number accounted for by one pair, A Diet of "Pests"
As a rule the Little Owl eats insects, rats, mice, rabbits, and voles, which n be picked up irom the ground, largely during the hours of darkness. Five insects are eaten in enormous numbers—the "daddy-longlegs" or crane fly, earwig, the cockchafer, a carabid beetle, and a dung-beetle,—and it is pointed out that four of the five most frequently eaten are listed as pests by the Ministry of Agriculture.
The Little Owl is revealed as "an excellent entomolo; one of the beetles it collected not having been found in Britain for many years, and it has also filled a role which will commend it to sportsmen, for, it is stated: It must obviously' have acted as a controlling factor on leather-jackets during 1936." The "plague" of leatherjackets (larvae of the crane fly) threatened many cricket grounds (including Lord's), tennis courts, golf courses, and playing-fields, The report suggests, as explanation of the Little Owl's bad reputation. that "occasionally, in exceptional circumstances, such as shortage of the normal food, individual owls have proved destructive.
Apparently he Little Owl is now much scarcer, and rears much smaller checked by a special committee which included Dr. W. E. Collinge, keeper of the Yorkshire Museum, Mr. J. C. F. Fryer, a Ministry of Agriculture laboratory director, and àr.. N. B. Kinnear, head of the bird section, British Museum.
The ' report concludes with the remark that the results coincide closely with these recorded 2,300 years ago by Aristotle, "probably the first naturalist to describe the feeding habits of the Little Owl."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.