24^ The Long-Eared Owl. [Sess. 



young vanished ! This, if the result of our previous visit, was 

 surely carrying intolerance of human interference to extreme 

 lengths. Some species are notoriously sensitive to human finger- 

 ing of their nests and eggs ; and cases of the desertion of eggs, 

 in consequence of such treatment, figure in the annals of most 

 ornithologists, — have figured occasionally in our own ; but the 

 desertion of young, implying, as it does, the extinction of every 

 parental instinct, must, we think, be almost unprecedented. 

 So inconceivable was this theory, that we at once looked about 

 for another. The tree had not been climbed before : if it had, 

 it would have borne the marks of the climbers. Human 

 marauders were summarily ruled out of the question. Avian 

 marauders were not so easily disposed of; but it seemed dilBfi- 

 cult to believe either that young Long-eared Owls formed 

 such a delectable meal for a Crow or a Magpie that one of the 

 latter would attack an old Owl for the sake of devouring her 

 progeny, or that a mother Owl was incapable of defending her 

 offspring from such raiders. How then had the youngsters 

 been spirited away ? They were too young to fly — we knew 

 from our upland experience that young Long - eared Owls 

 usually spend about a month in the nest. There was only 

 one plausible solution remaining to us — that the old birds had 

 removed them. Since that day I have read, in the ' Birds of 

 Yorkshire,' what appears to be a well-authenticated case of 

 a Long -eared Owl transferring her eggs from one nest to 

 another, and it is just possible — even if incredible and 

 entirely improbable — that some such transference of young 

 had occurred here. Unfortunately we have very weighty 

 evidence against the theory. We spent the remainder of the 

 afternoon searching the wood, and failed to find the youngsters 

 in any other nest. What is quite as much to the point, we 

 saw no more of Long-eared Owls in C. wood that year. 



Meanwhile, quite as mysterious things had been happening 

 in K. wood. On March 26 a Long-eared Owl was spotted 

 roosting in the Scots fir corner. On the following day an- 

 other Long-eared Owl was observed perched on an open larch 

 on the south side of the wood. On the evening of the same 

 day we heard the call -note of a Long-eared Owl for the first 

 time in a West Lothian wood. If you ask me how we knew 

 it was the call-note of a Long-eared Owl, I should find great 



