CHAPTER XIV. 
FREAKS OF BACHELORS AND BENEDICTS IN FEATHERS. 
We have seen much of the agencies and tactics 
that birds use in charming, but the features of when, 
where, and to what extent and degree the feathered gal- 
lant is enthralled has not been mentioned. If St. 
Valentine’s Day is a time of love letters and tokens 
because, as it has been asserted, the birds pair on that 
day, the custom must be based in an age and climate 
very different from ours. Farther south, of course, 
from the average of our latitude, some resident birds 
may be mated by the 14th of February, but within 
the climate of our middle latitude (35° to 40°) the 
pairing is much later. 
Again, at any point it is very variable in different 
birds, ranging in extremes in the limits noted from 
January to July. Some of the birds of prey are 
either paired in early winter or else have married for 
life, and many of our large owls, which hoot and 
“boo-hoo-hoo” and dance so ludicrously to captivate, 
began perhaps last fall, since their eggs are sometimes 
found in early February. 
This might make this eerie bird of night, instead 
of the dove, the appropriate symbol of the valentine, 
84 
