IN THE DEPTHS OF A FIR FOREST 47 



long before they can fly, and, like young herons, use their beaks with good 

 effect in the process. 



The characteristic of preferring some convenient branch to the more 

 comfortable-looking nest would seem to be typical of them, and it is owing to 

 this peculiarity that one so often finds them at a distance from the nest ; and 

 not, I think, that the parent owls carry their young in their feet from one 

 place to another. 



In the woods which they frequent one may more often find one of them 

 sitting still as a stone amongst the dark branches above the nest than remaining 

 as one of a contented family upon the scene of his hatching. Such little pere- 

 grinations lead to their somehow reaching the extended arms of the next tree, 

 and the next, until — at least as far as their human admirers are concerned — 

 they are lost amongst the shadows. 



But that the parents are able and ready to find and feed any member 

 of their family who happens thus to stray to a distance is shown by the follow- 

 ing incident — for the truth of which I can personally vouch. 



Some boys, walking one day through the pine woods in which lay their 

 home, saw sitting in one of the trees the motionless form of a young, though 

 almost fully fledged. Long-eared Owl. At once, of course, an altercation took 

 place as to how it was to be captured, the ultimate decision being that it should be 

 driven from perch to perch until tired out and persuaded to flutter earthwards. 



And at length, by driving it with the aid of clods of earth and sticks, 

 from the larger trees, and shaking it out of the thinner ones, they managed 

 to bring it to earth, and needless to say, carried it home in triumph ; the ques- 

 tion of food for it not apparently having occurred to them. 



So it was placed in a rabbit-hutch in the garden, with the possibility of 

 receiving some scraps of butcher's meat on the morrow. 



Next morning, however, ranged along in a row just outside the wire netting 

 of its cage, were the bodies of some five or six small birds — mostly greenfinches, 

 which were, no doubt, in excess of the young owl's requirements — for it had 

 already fed well. 



Each night a fresh supply of birds was laid in the same place by the old 

 Owl, who was in dajrtime generally hanging about in the trees close by. 



In fact, not only did she remain in the vicinity, but she would actually 

 answer the tenant of the cottage when he called to her. 



' Jummy,' he would shout, ' are you there ? ' and a faint mewing from 

 the shadows of the pines would answer him. 



But to return to the two owls on the nest. I found that they had grown 

 very considerably since I last saw them, and had reached the age when, instinc- 

 tively recognizing a human being as an enemy, they endeavour to make 

 themselves as big and fearful as possible in order to deter the visitor from 

 approaching too closely. 



