270 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



trees. I went at the same hour on several evenings 

 to watch them and experience pleasing little thrills. 

 I would station myself in the middle of the grove and 

 stand motionless against one of the tall pines, while 

 the two young birds would fly backwards and for- 

 wards from end to end of the grove, perching at 

 intervals to call in their catty voices, and then 

 resume their exercises. By-and-by a sudden puff 

 of air would fan my cheek or it would be slightly 

 brushed with feather-ends, and an owl would sweep 

 by. This trick they would repeat again and again, 

 always flying at my head from behind; and so 

 noiseless was the flight that I could never tell that 

 the bird was coming until it actually touched or 

 almost touched me in passing. These were indeed 

 the most ghost-like owls I had ever encountered; 

 and they had no fear of the human form, though it 

 evidently excited their curiosity and suspicion, and 

 no knowledge of man's deadly power: for this grove, 

 too, stood on land owned by the person who farmed 

 it, and he was his own gamekeeper. 



Thinking on my experience with these owls in an 

 unprotected clump in Wiltshire, it occurred to me 

 that owls of different species, where these birds are 

 not persecuted, are apt to indulge in this same 

 habit or trick, almost of the nature of a practical 

 joke, of flying at you from behind and dashing close 

 to your face to startle you. I remembered that in 

 my early years, in a distant land where that world- 

 ranging species, the short-eared owl, was common, 

 I had often been made to jump by this bird. 



