From its large size, powerful beak and claws, and fierce disposition, the eagle-owl, which is mainly nocturnal in its habits, is a terrible foe to the smaller animals, preying largely upon rats, mice, moles, birds, and frogs, while it also attacks and devours larger game, such as roe-deer fawns, hares, rabbits, hazel-hens, ducks, and geese. Its haunts are thick forests, especially those in which tints of rufous grey and black prevail; and in such situations the mottled, warm-coloured tints of its plumage harmonise both with the bark of the tree-trunks and the weathered surface of the rocks and cliffs. At even, with noiseless wings, the eagle-owl issues from its perch to sweep over the plains in search of prey; or, rising high in the air, utters its loud screech, and awakes the slumbering birds, which flutter from their roosts to meet their fate by the relentless talons and beak of the nocturnal marauder. The huge nest is generally built in trees, on cliffs, or in old buildings, but the two or three eggs may be laid in holes on the bare ground. The eggs are brooded by the female, who is fed during incubation by her partner. THE FLAMINGO (_Phœnicopterus roseus_) Flamingoes, of which there are several species, present us with one of the most striking instances of adaptation to a particular mode of life to be met with in the animal kingdom, more especially as the main feature in this adaptation is developed in its full perfection only when the bird is mature and takes to a special diet. In common with other waders, the adult flamingo has an enormously long neck and legs, and is thereby enabled to procure its food from depths inaccessible to most other birds, although it is frequently content to search for food in the shallows. Its distinctive structural peculiarity is, however, the sharp downward flexure of the extremity of the beak, and more especially that of the lower half. Such a beak appears at the first glance quite unsuited for groping up food from the mud of marshes and lagoons which form the favourite haunts of these stately birds; but while thus engaged, flamingoes turn their heads the wrong way up, when the beak at once becomes a most efficient ladle, admirably adapted for collecting and holding the small spiral univalve molluscs of the genus _Cerithium_ which in many districts form their chief food. In the young flamingo, whose diet is of a different nature, the beak is more or less normal in form. Flamingoes, with certain relationships to the storks, appear to have most affinity with ducks, geese, and swans; and it is curious to note how like are the head and neck of a flamingo, if the beak were but straightened out, to those of a swan, the resemblance extending in some cases even to the colour of the beak,--red or orange at the base and black at the tip.