246 The Long-Eared Owl, [Sess. 



to 1904, and repeated hunts throughout the summer brought 

 the same news. Perhaps, thought we in the returning 

 moments of our self-esteem, these 1904 Owls were wander- 

 ing birds — birds imbued with something of the vagrant spirit 

 of their relative the Short-eared Owl, who had been enticed 

 by that eminently pleasing corner of old Scots firs into mak- 

 ing it their nesting quarters for the season, but who had no 

 ties, no home yearning to fetch them back. Perhaps, we 

 thought in the alternating moments of humility, they were 

 still there complacently admiring their powers of self-efface- 

 ment, a little contemptuous of human bird-hunting skill. 

 The Short-eared Owl was a licensed vagrant, the Long-eared 

 Owl was not. 



And in 1906 we had warnings to go very warily in our 

 speculations. On March 5 a Long-eared Owl was seen in a 

 small coniferous wood, which we called the Thicket. This 

 wood lay about a mile to the north of E. wood; between them 

 stretched long strips of timber which practically linked them 

 together. The bulk of it planted on steeply rising ground was 

 dark and dense enough to please the most fastidious Owl 

 critic ; the upper part was older and looser, and celebrated in 

 our very personal geography as having held a Tawny Owl's nest 

 in 1902. Otherwise the Thicket had never yielded very much 

 in the way of Owls ; it yielded no more in 1906. On July 2 

 a Long-eared Owl was seen in the Scots fir corner of E. 

 wood. Coming as it did right at the end of the Long-eared 

 Owl's nesting season, this observation was more than a warning, 

 — it struck a shrewd blow at our conceit as well. All season we 

 had hunted the wood and seen nothing, and then just when we 

 were beginning to sum up the season's labour, draw this and that 

 conclusion, assign the Long-eared Owl his exact status in the 

 district's avifauna, this bird appeared, upset all our calcula- 

 tions, and cast us back into a region of speculation and doubt, 

 from which there could be no escape until the following spring. 

 Either this was a wandering bird newly arrived — he had the 

 air of a bird who had inhabited the wood for ages — or our 

 bird-hunting qualities were beneath disparagement. 



The following March (1907) we set about looking, as was 

 our annual custom, for what we were wont to regard as the 

 mythical March nest of the Tawny Owl, and on the 16th put 



