254 The Long-Eared Owl, [Sess. 



once. Although we searched it more than once after March 

 15, we saw no more of Long-eared Owls within its somewhat 

 limited and very nestless precincts. The Thicket of course 

 had given us a new interest at the outset. Since that 

 solitary glimpse of a bird in 1906 we had seen nothing of 

 Long-eared Owls here, and it was consequently a memorable 

 moment when a tap on a tree-trunk dislodged an Owl from 

 a well-preserved old Magpie nest near the centre of the wood. 

 It was not only a new nesting haunt ; it gave us our earliest 

 record for Long-eared Owl's eggs. Calculating that the bird 

 had laid one egg every second day, and that the third egg had 

 been laid on the day we discovered the nest, the first egg 

 must have been laid on March 10, fully a week before our 

 earliest previous record, which was the C. wood bird in 1907. 

 For the first time, too, we noticed that a Long-eared Owl was 

 capable of improving the condition of the appropriated nest. 

 The authorities had always refused to concede this power, and 

 hitherto we had been unable to report any breach of the law. 

 This nest had been quite obviously entirely re -lined with 

 juncus and meadow - sweet stems from the neighbouring 

 marsh. It was also littered in the most lavish manner with 

 downy breast feathers of the sitting Owl. Whatever other 

 Long-eared Owls might do, this one certainly seemed to have 

 exercised some rudimentary building instinct. In other re- 

 spects, however, it exhibited a most exasperating lack of 

 originality. Two or three days later it was observed, from 

 the ground, to be still brooding the nest. On the 21st the 

 inevitable had happened, and the nest was empty, — not quite 

 empty — part of an egg-shell remained. This egg-shell was 

 very strong evidence of Crow or Magpie work, but how a Crow 

 or Magpie could get at eggs which were being brooded by an 

 Owl was a problem which later experience only rendered more 

 mysterious. Throughout the following weeks of April we 

 explored the wood frequently in the hope of finding a second 

 nesting attempt, but it was not until May 3 that a forlorn 

 expedition met with any success. That day we flushed an 

 Owl from a very ancient dilapidated structure, which may at 

 one time in its history have been a squirrel's drey, in a larch 

 tree about thirty yards from the first nest. It contained three 

 young birds, which we gauged at eight days old, and for this 



