50 A WOODLAND MURDER. 



is cruel indeed. One would not mind so much 

 in the day time, and with adult animals, the 

 one preying upon the other. Even the heron 

 and the trout cannot but be justified by any 

 angler seeing that he is doing the same thing. 

 Fish however do not look after their young 

 unless it be to eat them ; but for these blackbirds 

 to have had their home destroyed does seem 

 unnecessarily hard. Yet it must take place 

 nightly somewhere, and in the present instance 

 I am fairly sure from the way the two owls 

 returned to the large oak tree on which I first 

 saw them that they were accompanied by their 

 own young ones, especially as there was a 

 slight metallic noise which probably came from 

 a hungry family. 



Both parent owls were noiseless. They 

 uttered none of their Hoo-Hoo-Hoots recalling 

 to memory a winter night in the New Forest 

 when I went out after supper to gather moss 

 for a wreath we were making for my uncle's 

 grave. The constant hoots of the brown owl 

 alternating with the scream of the barn owl 

 could be heard all around us in the forest, and 

 more than once we saw them pass among the 

 giant oaks. Their cries were a fitting dirge. 



****** 



I remember finding the nest of the Brown owl 

 some years ago in a rabbit burrow on the edge 

 of the red cliff, half a mile lower down the 

 river, in that patch of brushwood near the cart 

 bridge. They were large eggs, white and 

 smooth and round two of them the first day 



