OWLS 



I purpose in this chapter to touch lightly on 

 some of these points of interest, in the hope that I 

 may be able to impart to those who read it some 

 fragments of the pleasure which a loving and life- 

 long observation of its subject has given to me, and 

 may induce all who are connected directly or 

 indirectly with the land, to befriend a bird which, in 

 spite of many prejudices and some appearances to 

 the contrary, is, in the truest sense, the friend of 

 man. 



I will premise only that my field of observation 

 has been chiefly confined to the county of Dorset, 

 to the neighbourhood of the little village in which I 

 was born and bred, West Stafford, near Dorchester ; 

 to the grammar school at Blandford where I 

 received the first part of my education, and whose 

 headmaster, the Rev. J. Penny, encouraged all his 

 pupils, both by precept and example, to become, in 

 their measure, observers of Nature and to the 

 old-world Manor House of Bingham's Melcombe, in 

 which, now that the main work of my life, as a 

 master at Harrow, is over, I hope to end my days, 

 a veritable sanctuary of wild life and of "my 

 feathered friends." I shall confine what I have to 

 say chiefly to the four more familiar varieties of the 

 bird which are to be found in England the white, 



