191 7- BuRKiTT. — Note on the Long-eared Owl 163 



They will probably be so soft as to be barely audible close 

 at hand on a quiet night. This low bass note gets stronger 

 as the dusk increases, but though comparatively far-reaching 

 it is nearly impossible to locate exactly, especially when near 

 at hand or overhead. His note is always in a regular beat 

 of about 3 seconds, whereas the female's wail (rather like 

 a distant lamb) is, at her best, about 10 seconds interval, 

 and may be much more. After the male's first call there 

 will be silence for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes, w^hen he calls 

 again ; probably silence again, or just one reply note from 

 the female. She may have 10 minutes between her first 

 notes, but she gradually lessens the interval to 10 or 12 

 seconds. Twenty minutes to half an hour from his first 

 call, she flops down from her roost in the thick top of a 

 spruce to a bare branch half way to ground and half way 

 to the edge of the wood, keeping up her call. She seems 

 generally the first to leave her roost. He then comes along 

 clapping his wings together in slow but pretty loud flaps, 

 and both will fly and flap wings between various perches 

 along the adjacent edge of wood, calling to each other, 

 and flying about 10 feet from the ground. Or as grey 

 shadows they will flit about the wood, noiseless, except 

 for the uncanny clapping. When they think the light 

 sufliciently gone, the male drops down from his perch to 

 3 or 4 feet over the field, and steals away along the outside 

 edge of the wood for his night's work. She follows later. 

 If near nesting time she may not follow, or she may follow, 

 but return in three quarters of an hour and keep up her 

 wailing call half through the night, from perches near the 

 edge of the wood. I have thus been able to hear her 

 when I was nearly a quarter of a mile away. I never 

 heard the male call after he first leaves the w^ood. The 

 whole evening duet till they leave the wood lasts from 

 30 to 50 minutes. I was treated once to the probabty rare 

 experience of the male hoo-ing on the ground within 5 feet 

 of me, for a minute or so. It was amusing to see his 

 head rising and his eyes glaring as he gradually scented 

 something wrong. 



Enniskillen. 



