1909-1910-] The Lo7ig-Eared Owl. 253 



beside me, chattering repeatedly, and occasionally uttering 

 an enraged " wark," " wark," her eyes glaring and " ears " 

 depressed. She then surprised me by twice in succession 

 dropping to the ground and shamming wounded, fluttering her 

 wings and dragging herself helplessly along the ground, utter- 

 ing a low chattering the while. On reaching the nest I 

 found that the young had left, though they were doubtless in 

 hiding close by. The nest was full of droppings and d&tris 

 of remains of mice and small birds." 



It was evident now that the Scots fir corner pair of Owls 

 had nested again somewhere about the second week of May, 

 or, in other words, about the time that we had begun to re- 

 linquish the search. It seemed equally clear that, when left 

 to themselves. Long-eared Owls had no difficulty in rearing 

 their brood. We extracted what solace we could out of that 

 reflection, and waited impatiently for the following spring. 



1908 was a good year. I can look back upon it even 

 now, from the higher standpoint of 1910, and call it a good 

 year. But undoubtedly its best — its greatest day — was its 

 first, March 15, the day we appointed for the first scour of 

 these West Lothian woods for the season. We started in 

 R. wood by putting a Long- eared Owl off an empty nest in 

 the Scots fir corner. We followed this up by seeing a Long- 

 eared Owl in M. wood — part of the timber strip which links 

 E. wood and the Thicket together, a wood where we had 

 never seen a Long-eared Owl before. We succeeded this by 

 flushing a Long-eared Owl from a nest in C. wood, and then 

 crowned the day's operations by finding a Long-eared Owl's 

 nest with three eggs in the Thicket. In one day we had 

 located four different Long- eared Owls in a line of wood not 

 more than a mile -and -half in length! A wonderful day, 

 when we recollected the fruitless hunting of previous years. 

 And there was no vole plague nor any other kind of mammal 

 plague in West Lothian that year — except a plague of bird- 

 hunters, quoth the Long-eared Owl ! 



For the sake of lucidity I find it necessary, as I did with 

 the 1907 observations, to trace our subsequent experience in 

 each of these woods separately, although you will be good 

 enough to remember that our hunting in all these woods went 

 on more or less concurrently. M. wood I may dismiss at 



