Northern Observations of Inland Birds 53 



Generally speaking, however, the barn owl is the screaming 

 owl, and the tawny owl the hooting owl. Incidentally 

 the " ears '' by which the long-eared and the short-eared 

 varieties are named, are not ears at all, but merely personal 

 adornments like the tassels on the ears of the lynx and 

 the squirrel. Such adornments, as a rule, answer some 

 useful purpose, and in this case they are unusual, and 

 the unusual in Nature is terrifying. Therefore it may 

 be that the tassels of the lynx, the squirrel, and the owls 

 are to terrify — defensive in the case of the squirrel, 

 offensive (paralyzing) in the case of the other three. 



The barn owl is probably the commonest of our four 

 British species, and incidentally its distribution is over 

 almost the whole of the earth's surface. This is very 

 strange since the barn owl is essentially a stay-at-home 

 bird. It is probable that the majority of barn owls in 

 this country live and die within two miles of some central 

 landmark, and that, unless exceedingly hard winters 

 beset them, they never wander outside that limited area. 

 It is not difficult in the case of the peregrine and the 

 snipe to understand their universal range ; they are 

 strong flying and restless birds, and the young peregrine 

 seen over the Perthshire hills at the time of writing may 

 conceivably be hunting the foothills of the Himalayas 

 ere these notes go to press. The case of the barn owl 

 among birds is, however, almost analogous to the case 

 of the porcupine among animals. An individual porcupine 

 may spend the whole of his life in one poplar grove. 

 When forest fires come, every porcupine within the 

 fire belt perishes, and it takes years for them to creep 

 back into the burnt area. Thus we often find localities 

 named after the porcupine where these creatures do not 

 exist, such as the mining camp of Porcupine, N. Ontario ; 

 but on questioning the^Indians we learn that, just as 

 porcupines are still abundant in the valleys to north and 



