28 OWLS 



birds of the day. He is branded with perpetual 

 infamy." 



" Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him, 

 All mock him outright by day, 

 But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, 

 The boldest will shrink away/'* 



Should he be disturbed, by any accident, from 

 his resting-place by day, he is straightway mobbed 

 by a motley crowd of clamorous birds rooks, 

 starlings, missel thrushes, song-thrushes, blackbirds. 

 Chaffinches too come bustling up with crests erected 

 and emphatic "pink, pink," and even Tennyson's 

 "tits, wrens, and all winged nothings," emboldened 

 by numbers, join in the " hullabulloo " of dis- 

 approval and protest. The owl sits stock still 

 amongst them ; his eyes dazed by the light ; his 

 ears deafened by their cries ; his feelings outraged, 

 we may well believe, by their insults. "Hit him 

 hard ; he has no friends," seems to be their maxim. 

 He flies blundering from tree to tree, unable to 

 shake off his persecutors, who do not cease to 

 molest him, till he can find a hollow tree to hide 

 himself from their view, or till the shades of evening 

 make him once more at home. 



* Quoted by H. G. Bull in Notes on the Birds of Hereford- 

 shire, p. no. 



