“The largest of the horned owls is the eagle-owl. ‘It can easily be recognized,’ says Buffon, ‘by its burly form, its enormous head, its large and cavernous ears, the two egrets surmounting its head to a height of more than two inches and a half, its short hooked beak, black in color, its great clear eyes with their fixed gaze and large black pupils, encircled by an orange-colored ruff of feathers, and its face surrounded by hairs—or, rather, little rudimentary white feathers bordering a ring of other little feathers that are curled—also by its black hooked claws of great strength, its very short neck, its reddish brown plumage spotted with black and yellow on the back, its feet covered with thick down and reddish feathers to the very roots of the nails, and, finally, its hair-raising cry of whee-hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, poo-hoo, which it sends forth in the silence of the night when all the rest of the world is still. Then it is that it awakens its intended victims, fills them with vague alarm, pursues and catches them, and carries them off to the caverns where it has its hiding-place. It lives among the rocks or in old deserted towers in the mountains, rarely descending into the plains and never willingly perching on trees, but rather on the roof of some sequestered church or ancient castle. Its favorite prey consists of young hares, little rabbits, field-mice, and rats, of which it digests the fleshy substance and throws up the hair, bones, and skin in round balls. The eagle-owl makes its nest in some rocky cave or in a hole in some lofty old wall. Its nest is nearly three feet in diameter, and is made of small dry branches interwoven with flexible roots and padded with leaves inside. Only one or two, or rarely as many as three, eggs are found in this nest. In color they somewhat resemble the bird’s plumage, and in size they are larger than hens’ eggs.’” “Those two things like horns that the eagle-owl has on its head—are they ears?” asked Emile. “No, my boy, they are egrets, upstanding feathers that give the bird a warlike appearance. Its ears are not visible, being hidden by the plumage. They are very large and deep, which explains why the eagle-owl’s hearing is so wonderfully acute.” “The eagle-owl,” Louis here observed, “eats field-mice and rats, for which it is to be thanked; but it also eats young hares and young rabbits. Isn’t that a pity?”