Owls are still, I am glad to say, plentiful. They are amongst the farmers’ greatest feathered friends, killing enormous quantities of mice, which otherwise would damage his crops. {44b} We have three kinds on the moor or in the woods: 1st—the barn owl, or screech owl (stryx flammea); 2nd—the wood or brown owl (synnium aluco); 3rd—the horned-owl (asio otus). The two last are very much alike in both size and colour, but the last has two tufts of feathers rising on each aide of the head, from which it gets its name of horned-owl. I have a note among my shooting records: “Dec. 5th, 1872, shot Bird Hag Wood, in Kirkstead, put up about a dozen owls.” These would be the “horned” kind. Five were shot on that occasion, but as a rule they have been carefully spared, one only occasionally being killed as a specimen for stuffing. Within the nineties, being out with my gun, on the moor, when the ground was covered with snow, I passed by a solitary thick Scotch fir, when an owl flew out. I wanted a specimen for a friend who was staying with me, and I shot it. The report created quite a commotion within the tree, and some twenty owls were immediately flying about me. Not being likely to settle in the snow, and apparently dazed by the glare of the sun reflected from the snow, I left them as quickly as I could, to recover their composure, and return to the sheltered quarters in which they had congregated. Hunting, as they do, almost entirely by night, they have little opportunity of interfering with the game, nor is it their propensity to do so. {45} There are three very ancient hollow oak trees in “The Arbours” Wood in Kirkstead. These are a favourite resort of the barn owl. The carrion crow still nests on the moor, although the eggs are taken every season. But the old birds are very wary, and manage to keep out of shot. The common rook, however, of late years, has got a bad name, as having taken up the marauding habits of the genuine crow. Owing to the improved cultivation of land, there is not now the supply of grubs on which the rook used to feed, and they have taken to hunting for the eggs of partridge and pheasant, and may be seen “quartering” the ground as methodically as a pointer or setter. They are strongly suspected of killing the young as well as rifling the nests of eggs, and the Scotch keepers complain of their depredations on the moors, among the young grouse. A writer in the “Yorkshire Poet” (of August 22, 1898) says that black game are decreasing in the Border counties, as the rooks destroy the eggs.