276 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



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 forwards 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 

 ghostlike 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 un- 

 protected 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. 



