62 Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



its movements coinciding more or less with those of the 

 woodcock — not that it follows the woodcock, but that, 

 probably, the same conditions of wind and weather apply 

 in both cases. Being a migrant, it is more gregarious 

 than our other owls, if not more sociable. 



The barn owl and the tawny owl are distinctly solitary 

 birds, but I believe the long-eared owl is given to social 

 meetings. Walking along the road between Burnsall 

 village and Barden Priory very early one morning, I 

 heard an immense hubbub of small birds in a larch at 

 the edge of the dense evergreen forest at the roadside. 

 I said to a stonebreaker seated at his work near by : "I 

 believe there is an owl in that tree.'' He replied : ** There 

 generally is this time of day." 



We adjourned to the spot, and what was our surprise 

 on beholding not one owl, nor even two, but a whole 

 flock of long-eared owls seated in the branches without 

 any attempt at concealment ! It looked like a meeting 

 of two or three families, indeed a gathering of the clans, 

 and as we watched they flew away in ones and twos, 

 choosing various directions. 



One never sees a similar gathering of short-eared owls 

 for the very excellent reason that they are not tree birds. 

 They are birds of the swamplands and level marshes 

 rather than of the broken hill country. In my fourteenth 

 year or thereabouts I was walking with a school friend 

 along the banks of a stream near Oakham town when we 

 put up numbers of birds in the space of a hundred yards 

 or so bordering a woodland. They rose for the most part 

 at our feet from the grass and bramble, and I took them 

 to be a new species of woodcock ! On being disturbed, 

 however, they proceeded to fly up and down five feet 

 or so from the water, and I saw then that they were owls. 

 My studies were much hindered by my friend, who, 

 having no interest in bird life, amused himself during the 



