CHAPTER IX 



OWLS IN A VILLAGE 



In November, when tramping in the Midlands, I paid 

 a visit to a friend who had previously informed me, in 

 describing the attractions of the small, remote, rustic 

 village he lived in, that it was haunted by owls. 



The night-roving bird that inhabits the country 

 village and its immediate neighbourhood is, in most 

 cases, the white or barn owl, the owl that prefers a 

 loft in a barn or a church tower for home and breed- 

 ing-place to the hollow, ivied tree. The loft is dry 

 and roomy, the best shelter from the storm and the 

 tempest, although not always from the tempest of 

 man's insensate animosity. The larger wood owl 

 is supposed to have a different disposition, to be a 

 dweller in deep woods, in love with " seclusion, gloom, 

 and retirement," — a thorough hermit. It is not so 

 everywhere, certainly not in my friend's Gloucester- 

 shire village, where the white owl is unknown, while 

 the brown or wood owl is quite common. But it is 

 not a thickly wooded district ; the woods there are 

 small and widely separated. There is, however, a 



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