LONG-EARED OWL 37 



tap with a stick at the base of the tree. But as it 

 seldom flies, in its tumbling, sleepy fashion, more 

 than some twenty or thirty yards away, and then 

 pitches on the middle of a branch, you can often 

 come on it again, and creep up so close to it that 

 you can make out its distinguishing marks, its 

 beautifully - mottled brown plumage, its ears or 

 horns, which it can raise or depress at pleasure, 

 and its eyes, which flash fire at you from their 

 yellow irides. These eyes he fixes steadily on 

 you. Fix your eyes on him in turn, and walk 

 slowly round him, first to the right and then to 

 the left, in a full half-circle, and he will follow you 

 with his eyes, without moving his body, throughout. 

 It is this peculiar habit of his, and of some of his 

 allies, that has given birth, I fancy, to the Yankee 

 or Indian legend, that if you go round and round an 

 owl of the country very slowly, with your eyes fixed 

 on him, he too will go round and round very slowly, 

 with his eyes fixed on you, till his head which, in 

 any case, is rather loosely affixed to his shoulders 

 drops off his body ! 



No owl has much building talent. The horned 

 owl lays her five or six white eggs, sometimes in an 

 old squirrel's drey far out on the bough, sometimes 

 in an old hawk's or crow's or magpie's nest, not 



