NOCTURNAL BIRDS OF PREY
“The barn-owl, the horned owl, the gray owl, the white owl, and other
similar birds are known under the general name of nocturnal birds of
prey. They are called birds of prey because they live by hunting game
of various sorts, especially such rodents as rats and mice. They are
among birds what the cat is among mammals, untiring destroyers of those
fur-covered creatures of which the mouse is the most familiar example
to you. Our language has long since taken note of this resemblance in
habits by coining the name chat-huant [hooting cat], which is applied
to some of these birds. They are cats that fly, that hoot, or, in other
words, that utter cries like mournful howls of distress. Also, they are
nocturnal; that is, they remain during the day in some obscure
hiding-place, which they leave only at nightfall to hunt in the
twilight and moonlight.
“Their eyes are very large and round and are placed in the front of the
head instead of one on each side. A wide ring of fine feathers
encircles each eye. The need for these enormous eyes is plainly seen in
the birds’ nocturnal habits. Being obliged to seek their food in a very
feeble light, they must, in order to see with any distinctness, have
eyes that admit as much light as possible; that is, the eyes must be
such as can open wide.
“But this development of the organs of sight, so useful in the
night-time, is a serious inconvenience in the bright light of day.
Dazzled, blinded by the sun’s rays, the bird of darkness stays in some
safe hole and dares not come out. If obliged to issue forth, it does so
with extreme caution for fear of hurting itself. It wings its way with
hesitation and in short slow flights. Other birds, birds of the day,
seeing its uncertainty and awkwardness, come and vie with one another
in offering insults to the clumsy stranger. The redbreast and the
tomtit are among the first to hasten to the scene, followed by the
finch, the blackbird, the jay, the thrush, and many others. Perched on
a branch, the night-bird receives the aggressors with a grotesque
balancing of its body, turning its big head this way and that in a
ridiculous manner and rolling its great eyes as if thinking thus to
terrify its persecutors. But all in vain. The smallest and weakest are
the boldest in tormenting it; they assault their victim with beak and
claw, pulling out its feathers before the hapless bird can muster
courage to defend itself.”
“Just think,” said Emile, “of a teasing tomtit and a saucy redbreast
making sport of an owl blinded by the sun! Why do they behave so?”
“From motives of revenge. The owl loses no opportunity to gobble up
those little birds in the night, and shows no more compunction over it
than if they were nothing but common mice. Therefore what a frolic it
is for the little winged people when by good luck the night-bird strays
into the light of day! The pecks fall thick as hail on the sufferer’s
back, and it is nearly deafened with shrill screams of triumph and
insulting cries of hatred. The redbreast pulls out a feather, the
tomtit threatens the enemy’s eyes, the jay overwhelms it with abuse.
The whole grove is in an uproar. But beware when night closes in; then
the boldest will lose courage. These same saucy little birds, that come
in the daytime and insult the owl, flee from it in wild alarm as soon
as darkness allows it to move about and use its powerful talons and
hooked beak.”
“The redbreast had better get out of the owl’s way when the owl can
see,” said Emile; “it would pay dearly if it tried then to pull out a
feather.”
“On account of the great size of their eyes, nocturnal birds of prey
require a soft light like that of dawn and nightfall. Consequently,
they leave their lurking-places to hunt for prey either soon after
sunset or just before dawn. Then it is that their raids are most likely
to be successful, for they find the small animals either fast asleep or
on the point of falling asleep. Moonlight nights are the best for their
purposes; those are their nights of veritable joy and feasting, when
they can hunt for hours at a time and lay in large supplies of choice
provisions. But when there is no moon they have only one scant hour in
the early morning and another in the evening for hunting. That means
they must fast for hours and that is why they are so greedy when they
can get as much food as they want.”
“They are very silly to fast like that,” Emile declared. “In their
place I should hunt all night, even without a moon.”
“You say that because you think the owl can see clearly in the blackest
darkness. But you are mistaken. To see, we must not merely direct our
gaze toward the object to be seen; we must receive into our eyes the
light reflected from that object. In the act of seeing, nothing goes
out from us; everything comes to us from the thing seen. We do not
really throw our glance toward any given object; it is the object that
throws its light toward us; or if it does not throw any light, it is
for that reason invisible. What I am now saying about human beings
applies to all animals. Not one, absolutely not one, can see in the
absence of light.”
“I had always thought,” said Louis, “that cats could see in
pitch-darkness.”
“Others think so too, but they are much mistaken. The cat can no more
distinguish objects, if light is totally lacking, than any other
creature can. It has an advantage over us, I grant you: it has large
eyes, the pupils of which it can contract and almost close when it
finds itself exposed to a bright light that would otherwise dazzle it,
or open wide to receive more of the feeble light diffused in a dark
room. These large eyes enable it to find its way in places which to us,
with our poorer sight, seem pitch-dark. But in reality the darkness is
not complete where a cat can manage to see well enough for its
purposes. If light is totally lacking, the cat may open its eyes as
wide as possible, but it will see nothing, absolutely nothing. In this
particular, nocturnal birds do not differ from the cat: their large
eyes, made for seeing in a dim light, can see nothing whatever when the
night is perfectly dark.
“Now let us follow the bird in its hunt. The night is a fine one for
hunting; the air is calm, the moon shining. The hunt begins with a
lugubrious war-cry. At that dreaded signal the tomtit hardly feels safe
even in the deepest hollow of its tree, the redbreast trembles beneath
its shelter of thick foliage, and the finch loses its head with fright.
God of the weak, God of the little birds, protect them now! Make the
owl, enraged as it still is from the insults of the day, miss them in
its search! Blessed be Thy holy name if the rapacious bird turns in
some other direction! It skirts the groves and skims over the open
plain and the plowed fields. It inspects the furrows where the
field-mouse crouches, the stretches of grass-land where the mole
burrows, the tumble-down buildings in which rats and mice scamper to
and fro. Its flight is silent, its soft wings cleaving the air without
making the slightest sound to awaken its intended victims. This
noiselessness of flight is due to the structure of the bird’s feathers,
which are soft as silk and of finest texture. Nothing gives warning of
its sudden coming: the prey is seized even before it has suspected the
nearness of the enemy. The owl, on the contrary, with its exceptional
acuteness of hearing, is kept informed of all that is going on in the
neighborhood, its large, deep ears detecting even the rustle of a
field-mouse in the grass. If the mouse begins to nibble a rootlet or a
grain of wheat, the bird hears the sound of its incisors and pounces on
it immediately.
“The prey is seized by two strong claws warmly gloved in down as far as
the roots of the nails. Each foot has four toes, three pointing
habitually forward, and one backward; but, by a privilege peculiar to
nocturnal birds of prey, one of the front toes is movable and can be
turned back so that the set of talons is divided into two pairs of
equal power whenever the bird wishes to grip, as in a vise, the branch
on which it perches, or the victim struggling in its grasp. One blow of
the beak breaks the head of the captured creature. This beak is short
and very hooked. The two mandibles move with great ease, which enables
them, in striking against each other, to give out a sharp rattling
sound or clicking by which the bird expresses anger or fright. They
stretch wide at the moment of swallowing, exposing a big opening
leading into a very large gullet. When they are thus opened, the prey,
which has already been kneaded into a compact mass between the claws,
disappears entirely as if swallowed up by an abyss. All goes down,
including bones and hair. Not a trace is left of the field-mouse, not
even its coat of fur. But a single victim is seldom enough, and so the
hunt continues. More mice follow the first one, and all are first
killed by a peck on the head, all are swallowed whole. If the bird
chances upon a fat beetle, he does not disdain it. It is a small
mouthful, to be sure, but highly flavored with spices that will aid
digestion. At last, having eaten all it possibly can, the owl returns
to its lodging in the hollow of some rock, or in a decayed tree trunk,
or in some ruined building.
“Now follows digestion. Motionless in the quiet of its peaceful
solitude, the bird gently closes its eyes to dream of the fine exploits
it has just achieved and to plan others for the following night. Its
slumbers are deep and long. In the meantime the stomach does its work.
The food swallowed without any preparation or sorting must be divided
into two parts, that which is really nutritious and that which is
worthless. With the aid of its gastric juice the stomach carefully
separates the bones and skins from the nutritious part of its contents.
The flesh thus made semi-fluid disappears, to be converted into blood,
and a confused mass remains, composed of skins turned inside out and
wearing all their fur, bones as clean as if they had been scraped with
a knife, and the hard wing-covers of beetles. This bulky mass could not
be passed on by the stomach without danger. How then will the bird get
rid of it? Let us watch and find out. Ah, the owl is waking up!
Grotesque heavings of the body denote trouble within. The disturbance
increases, something ascends through the outstretched neck, the beak
opens, and it is all over: there drops to the ground a ball containing
skins, bones, scales, fur, feathers—in fact, the entire mass of
indigestible matter.
“All nocturnal birds of prey practise this undignified method of
freeing the stomach: they throw up in a ball the rejected remnants of
what they have swallowed whole. If you ever find yourself near an owl’s
retreat, examine the ground beneath it: the balls of little bones and
hair will tell you from how many mice and other rodents of all kinds
these birds deliver us.”
“I have seen some of those balls near a rock all white with bird-dung,”
said Louis.
“Some owl certainly lived there. It was responsible for the dung and
the balls of refuse that you saw.”