PLATE I 

 LONG-EARED OWL. Asio otus 



May 29///, 1893. This nest was taken in the Big Wood, Lake of Monteith. 

 It had been originally built by a pair of Hoodie Crows, and was a large, bulky 

 collection of dead heather stalks, larch twigs, sticks, etc., and was placed 

 among the top branches of an old Scotch fir, rent and torn by storms and 

 half blown down. The old tree grew near the top of a steep knoll in the 

 middle of the wood. I saw a pair of Hoodie Crows near the place, and 

 climbed to the nest to see if they had young ones there. I was very 

 agreeably surprised when a Long-eared Owl flew off the nest. Though the 

 date is an unusually late one for this species, the nest contained five fairly 

 fresh eggs, and was lined with a good deal of sheep's wool and rabbit's fur. 

 The male bird was roosting in a tree quite close by, huddled against the 

 trunk. I put him up when I came down after photographing the nest. 



It was no mean task to get a really good photograph of this nest to 

 get one at all, in fact as it was in the very top of a huge old gnarled 

 branch growing out of the torn and twisted trunk, forming a sort of second 

 top to the tree, and must have been about eighteen feet from the steep side 

 of the knoll, and much more from the root of the tree. What remained of 

 the rest of the tree was rather lower than the branch the nest was in, and 

 I couldn't see the eggs from it ; fortunately it was strong, and, by erecting a 

 sort of flagstaff, made from a dead stick about ten feet long, to which I 

 lashed my camera, I was able to focus on the nest and get two satisfactory 

 photographs showing the eggs in it. 



I rested on the knoll for a while after my labours, and was soothing my 

 nerves with the fragrant weed, when the two Owls flew silently round the 

 tree and alighted in a thick part of it. After about ten minutes, during 

 which time I lay quite still, one of them flew round the tree once or twice 

 and returned to its post beside the other. In about five or six minutes they 

 both flew up to the nest, and, after hovering about it for a moment, the hen 



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