154 THE LONG- EARED OWL. 



the darker hours, as we have met them in the woods sailing 

 quietly along, as if hawking, on a bright sunny day, and 

 invariably found in or around the nest feathers and other 

 remains of birds ; in one case a freshly-killed chaffinch, in 

 another the wing of a snipe, and several smaller birds ; 

 and in a pellet the indigestible pad of a young hare or rabbit." 

 So here are two totally different versions. Macgillivray 

 admits that " of its nocturnal flight he is unable to speak." 

 Nor do authors agree one whit better about the number of 

 eggs or mode of hatching them. Mr Luke thinks three is the 

 usual number, and that the bird commenced incubation when 

 the first egg was laid, as " there could not be less than eight or 

 ten days' difference in the age of the young ones he saw, so that 

 some days must intervene between the production of each egg, 

 the female beginning to sit as soon as the first eggs are laid — 

 a provision which enables the old birds the more readily to 

 supply the demands of their voracious progeny." Mr Alfred 

 Newton, on the other hand, says the " usual number of eggs are 

 four, although the gamekeeper found a nest with five eggs, and. 

 his brother saw six young ones in the same nest." He also 

 says he "has got wheatears, willow-wrens, and chaffinches, or 

 at least their remains, in its nest ; " and regarding incubation he 

 says — " My experience is opposed to Messrs Luke's opinion, for 

 I think it delays incubation until its clutch, of eggs is completed." 

 These different opinions bear out my observations on the 

 varying habits of birds accommodating themselves to different 

 localities and circumstances, although in the main true to 

 their species. Like the rest of the family it is an early breeder. 

 On the 17th of April 1863 I got a nest in a larch and Scotch fir 

 wood at Allanhill (since cut down) with three ripe young ones 

 and three rotten eggs — an unusual thing ; and next day, the 

 18th, I got another nest in the old fir park on Tentsmuir with 

 five eggs, some of them fresher than others, which shows that 

 this bird had been later in breeding, or had been harried before. 

 But I have got young owls nearly ripe as early as the end of 

 March — two of which I kept for about a year. They were 

 taken from a small wood called Clash Wood, about five miles 

 from St Andrews. There were three in the nest and two rotten 

 eggs. It may possibly be owing to its early breeding that the 

 owl is set clown as the representative bird of January in Cassell's 

 iC Birds of the Month"— 



" January 1891 owl ;" 

 " What songster wakens when across the snow 



