12 OWLS 



with the softest white down, and looking like so 

 many puff-balls with brilliant dark eyes inserted in 

 them, remain in the nest for many weeks, and are 

 the unceasing care of the parent birds. A mother 

 often loves best those of her children who are most 

 undutiful, who give her most trouble and anxiety. 

 Most young birds begin to shift for themselves 

 within a week or two of their birth, and family 

 life ceases altogether a week or two later again, 

 except in the case of a few birds, like the titmouse 

 or the magpie, which enjoy or endure the pleasurable 

 pains of a family till the next spring comes 

 round. Some few birds, like the young partridge, 

 the young peewit, and the young wild-duck, begin 

 to "kick over the traces" as soon as they are born. 

 They run off, as the saying is, with the egg-shell 

 on their backs. They rush about over the grass or 

 the water, pick up grubs or gnats, and squat down 

 into their smallest, or scuttle away into the nearest 

 place of refuge at the first note of alarm given by 

 the ever anxious mother. Young owls, on the 

 contrary, which I have left in the nest, newly born, 

 at Bingham's Melcombe, at Easter, I have found 

 still in the nest and unable or unwilling to fly, when 

 I have returned there, after a summer term at 

 Harrow, nine or ten weeks later. If it be true that 



