66 OWLS 



connected, I believe, with this very same pair of 

 birds will prove. Some years later, I was tapping 

 with my climbing-stick another elm-tree, in this 

 same field, three hundred yards away, expecting to 

 see a jackdaw hastily scuttle out of his hiding-place. 

 Instead of that, a brown owl slowly poked its 

 solemn-looking head out of the hole, and remained 

 there looking down upon me with its big, mournful, 

 dreamy eyes. I climbed the tree ; it did not stir an 

 inch. I lifted it gently out. Owls, as I have said, 

 are always thin, not much else than feathers ; but 

 this one, from its weight, seemed to be feathers and 

 nothing else at all. Its eyes slowly glazed ; it 

 turned over on its side, and died in my hand. I 

 blew its fluffy feathers apart to see if I could unravel 

 the mystery of its death. There was one tiny 

 shot-hole in its skull, and, on inquiry, I found that 

 some few weeks before, when an adjoining withy 

 bed was being beaten for game, a boy, anxious, like 

 others of his kind, to "kill something," had fired at 

 a big brown owl which had come lumbering out of 

 an ivy-tree, its winter resting-place. The bird had 

 quivered as he struck it, but had not fallen to the 

 ground, and, escaping for the time, had evidently 

 been dying, by inches, ever since, in the hollow in 

 which I had found it ; while her mate, faithful unto 



