256 The Long-Eared Owl. [Sess. 



keenness of our perceptive faculties. Unfortunately there 

 were several indications of their enduring dulness. The 

 Long-eared parent of the five young must have laid for the 

 second time in the Magpie's nest about the third week of 

 April. We had been in the wood a dozen times since then 

 and failed to discover the fact : the idea that the birds would 

 use the same nest again seems to have missed our addled 

 pates altogether. 



On the evening of May 27 we stood outside the Thicket, 

 and listened to the hunger-call of young Long-eared Owls. 

 It came from every quarter of the wood — the three young- 

 sters had evidently scattered widely apart, — a high-pitched 

 piercing note — it might be the note the authorities describe 

 as a " mew," — far-carrying ; very much louder than any note 

 we had so far heard used by the old birds. We grew very 

 familiar with this hunger -call in E. wood later on. We 

 could now record in history that two more families of Long- 

 eared Owls had been reared in West Lothian. We could 

 not have been more highly gratified had the families been 

 our own. 



To go back now to the eventful March 15, you will recall 

 that the first of our masterly strokes that day had been to 

 flush a Long-eared Owl from an empty nest in the Scots fir 

 corner of E. wood. This nest was the first of two which the 

 Carrion-crows had built in 1905, and our knowledge of its 

 antecedents enabled us to be quite sure that the Long-eared 

 Owl had refurbished it. For the luxuriant wool lining of the 

 Crow the Long-ear had substituted an austere bed of dry 

 grass. On March 22 this nest contained one egg. On the 

 same day we noticed that the male was roosting in a fir very 

 near the nesting- tree. This proximity of the male (?) Long- 

 eared Owl's roosting-perch to the nest had been observed on 

 several previous occasions, both in the upland woods and in 

 West Lothian. It seemed to express an afi'ectionate interest 

 in the nest, which was at considerable variance with the 

 manifestations of the Tawny Owl. We do not remember ever 

 seeing a male Tawny Owl perched near the nest, — we should 

 not be surprised if during most of the nesting season he lived 

 in another wood. From March 22 this nest was examined 

 from the ground daily, and for a time, in the phrase which 



