58 OWLS 



pee- wit ? which is never so vocal as in spring-time ; 

 for, as Tennyson tells us 



"In the Spring, the wanton lapwing takes itself another 

 crest." 



Or can it be the baby owl whose unformed plaint 

 it resembles more closely? In this latter case, the 

 owl will, in the opinion of the poet, take not 

 merely First class, but Double First class honours, 

 as the author of two of the most inspiriting and 

 bewitching of sounds.* 



Wordsworth, as remarked by Mr Lowell, agreed, 

 on second thoughts, with the poets whom I have 

 just quoted, and administered a severe rebuke to 

 those who represented the note of the owl as 

 melancholy. He practised what he preached, for 



* One of my correspondents recognises in the sound " pee- 

 wee " "the joyous note which is little more than a call heard 

 from March to the end of May," of the little tree-creeper ; 

 another remarks that it is " exactly the sound made by the 

 night-jar when on the wing." I incline to think that the note 

 of the tree-creeper is too minute to have been coupled by 

 Nash with the loud ringing notes of the cuckoo, the nightin- 

 gale, and the owl ; while the cry of the night-jar, the last of 

 our summer birds of passage, is not to be heard till towards 

 the end of May, too late, therefore, to be coupled with other 

 sounds suggestive of early spring. I am inclined to think that 

 u pee-wee" is the familiar note of the young of the brown owl, 

 which is a very early breeder. 



