Читать книгу Jack Miner and the Birds, and Some Things I Know about Nature онлайн

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The great horned owl nests in the winter or early, early spring, building in a cavity of a tree or a crow’s or hawk’s nest. They lay two pure white eggs, round like a turtle’s eggs, about the size of an ordinary barnyard fowl’s or a shade smaller. I have got the nest as early as the first day in February, when old Mrs. Owl was setting. The female horned owl is larger than the male; she will weigh about four pounds and has a wing-spread of fully fifty inches.

Now I know there are a lot of people who protect these cannibal birds because they kill mice. Yes, they do kill mice. But it takes dozens and dozens of our insectivorous and weed-destroying birds to raise one owl. I claim that the good one robin or quail does, in one day, overbalances the harm a dozen mice will do.

Now we come to the crow and bronze grackle, the largest blackbird. These two birds raise their young chiefly on the eggs of other birds. Why this is, I won’t pretend to say, nor will I attempt to throw a ray of light upon it, but will frankly confess I do not understand. Possibly it has come about through man’s interference with their natural habits.