THE TAWNY OWL. 293 



distant hoot may be heard in the recesses of the woods. 

 This is quickly followed by another in the vicinity, and if 

 the listener blow " mimic hootings " on his closed hands/ 

 the whole of the Owls in the neighbourhood immediately 

 join in chorus, 



witli quivering peals 

 And long halloos, and screams and echoes loud 

 Redoubled and redoubled. 



Wordsworth. 



Even during the day, " the tremulous sob of the complain- 

 ing Owl" sometimes reaches the ear from its secluded 

 retreat in the woods, where, perched high up amongst the 

 branches of a Scotch or spruce fir, it sits dozing close to the 

 trunk, until the evening." 



In former times the Owl was generally regarded as a 

 bird of ill omen, and its " notes of woe " were heard with 

 superstitious fear. Shakespeare makes its doleful cry pierce 

 the ear of Lady Macbeth while the murder is being done, 

 and calls it " the fatal bellman which gives the stern'st good 

 night." 



This species is much bewildered by sunlight ; and the 

 smaller birds, such as Blackbirds and Chaflinches, take a 

 peculiar delight in mobbing and tormenting it, if they dis- 

 cover its hiding-place during the day. They fly round 

 about, and dart into, the tree in which the object of their 

 hatred is perched, screaming and chattering all the while ; 

 and the attack is generally continued until the Owl is com- 



1 On favourable nights, my friend Mr. Arthur H. Evans, of Cambridge, and 

 I, have sometimes heard half-a-dozen Owls in different parts of the Paxton 

 woods answering our calls, one after another, as quickly as they could lioot. 

 An echo, which repeats the calls when they are made in my garden, adds to 

 their effect. Sometimes all the Owls are silent, and will not answer a call. 

 They hoot on certain nights, and are not heard on others. 



2 Miss Georgina Milne Home has informed me that, on the 6th of June 1886, 

 she heard an Owl hooting near the Old Quarry, at Milne Graden, between one 

 and two o'clock in the afternoon. I heard one hooting at Paxton, at 1.30 p.m., 

 on the 14th of March 1886 ; also, at 2.30 r.M., on the 8th of February 1888. 



