THE BIRD OF NIGHT 



accorded him. So, if it be such a glorious achievement 

 in the eyes of some people to find a big owl's nest, and 

 if you know of a tract of woods where you keep hearing 

 the owls hoot in winter, there is no reason in the wide 

 world why you shouldn't be the one to find the nest. 



But when is the time to search.? Long before most 

 people imagine. In the cold and snowy weather of 

 1906-7 a friend of mine found one of my old pairs of 

 Great Horned Owls in the pineries of Plymouth County, 

 Mass., doing business at the old stand in the middle of 

 February! A cold sleet storm was raging, but he 

 donned his wet-day uniform of rubber — ^boots, coat, and 

 hat — and found the big owl sitting on her open plat- 

 form of sticks high up in a tall white pine on her two 

 nearly fresh eggs. He took these as trophies, and early 

 in March the great birds had twins again, which he 

 allowed to hatch, and enjoyed photographing them as 

 they grew up. That is the true sportsman's spirit, to 

 defy cold and wet, and what a pleasure it is to add such 

 an achievement to the repertoire of one's sporting 

 experiences ! 



By the last week in February, probably Washington's 

 birthday, every well-regulated family of Great Horned 

 Owls in the latitude of from New Jersey to Massa- 

 chusetts ought to have eggs, or not later than the tenth 

 or fifteenth of March even up in northern New England 

 or southern Canada. The Barred Owls are a little 

 later, and I have usually found them to have fresh eggs 

 by the first of April, and sometimes as early as the 



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