THE TAWNY OWL. 279 



voice, and then, after a short pause, repeat the same letter in a 

 drawling, tremulous accent, you would have a tolerably just idea of 

 the hooting of the tawny owl. It will sometimes produce a sharp 

 cry, which sounds not unlike the word quo-ah ; both male and 

 female utter this cry. 



Though the tawny owl generally takes up its abode in dark and 

 gloomy woods, still it occasionally settles very near the habitation of 

 man. In a hollow sycamore, within a dozen yards of this house, 

 there had been the nest of a tawny owl, time out of mind. Here 

 the birds would have remained to this day, had not a colony of jack- 

 daws, which I had encouraged by hanging up wooden boxes for 

 them in the next tree, actually driven the owls away, in order that 

 they might get possession of the hole. Before this misfortune befell 

 them, a servant once robbed their nest, and placed the young ones 

 in a willow cage, not far from the hollow tree. The parent birds 

 brought food for their captive offspring, but, not being able to get it 

 through the bars of the cage, they left it on the ground on the out- 

 side. This food consisted of mice, rats, small birds, and fish, which 

 I myself saw and examined. At the present time I have a tawny owl 

 sitting on four eggs, in a large ash tree, close to a much-frequented 

 summer-house. The male stays in a spruce fir tree, and hoots occasion- 

 ally throughout the day. I have found, by dissecting the ejected bolus 

 of this species, that it feeds copiously upon different sorts of beetles. 

 Were I just now requested to find a hollow tree in the woods of 

 the neighbourhood, I should say that it were useless to go in quest 

 of one, so eager have the proprietors been to put into their pockets 

 the value of every tree which was not " making money," according 

 to the cant phrase of modern wood-valuers. No bird has felt this 

 felling of ancient timber more than the tawny owl. To the extreme 

 scarcity of breeding-holes, and to the destructive measures of the 

 gamekeepers, I attribute the great rarity of this bird in our own im- 

 mediate neighbourhood ; add to this, that it sometimes rests on the 

 ground, under coveit of a bush, where it Is flushed and killed by 

 sportsmen while in pursuit of woodcocks. Were it not for my park, 

 I believe that the tawny owl would be extinct in this part of York- 

 shire. Some ten years ago, it was so scarce that I seldom heard its 

 voice. Once or so in the winter, I could catch the hooting of a 

 solitary owl as I was after the midnight poachers, but that was all, 



