i9i3- I 9 I 4-] A Pair of Long-Eared Owls. 87 



possible that food was scarce that year, but a good deal of 

 their behaviour, especially on the part of the female, seemed 

 to savour of inexperience, and sometimes we had a trifling 

 suspicion that the male was not quite the ideal father he 

 might have been expected to become. "When the female 

 commenced to share in the hunting we rather think he took 

 things easily, and there is one memorable glimpse of him 

 about this time which may show him in his true colours. 



We were in the wood one night from eleven o'clock, 

 and during a period of about three hours, the male had 

 probably come in once, the female three times ; but we can- 

 not be certain, our only clue to the sex of the visitants being 

 the route by which they entered the wood, and neither bird 

 could be said to be exactly a slave to habit. Just when the 

 first faint glimmer of dawn was beginning to cast a halo over 

 the ground vegetation we became aware, not by any particular 

 sense, but rather by a special acuteness of all the senses 

 which we developed during these night watches, of a bird 

 having settled on a tree some twenty yards from where we 

 lay hidden, then a low 00 betokened his identity. Tor a 

 time he was invisible, but as the light gained and the boles 

 of the pines emerged from the darkness he became dimly 

 perceptible, a rather ragged figure on the dead branch of a 

 tree scarcely a dozen feet above the ground. And then we 

 saw that he was busy — busy preening his feathers. The 

 mother bird was still out scouring the fields for food. Here 

 was the father, at half-past one in the morning after a short 

 midsummer night of five hours, preparing to roost ! Plainly 

 he was finished for the night, and when he had ceased to 

 preen his plumage there was such a comical air of affected 

 exhaustion about him, such an air of having worn his body 

 to the very bones in the family interests, that we could not 

 help wondering how the female had tolerated him so long. 

 He was still on the dead branch when the carols of the first 

 Skylarks rose from the neighbouring fields about two o'clock, 

 and he was still there a little later when daylight was flooding 

 the land and we also departed to roost. 



In 1911 the nurture of the progeny proceeded on slightly 

 different and, judging from the results, more improved lines. 

 The care, if not the management — one cannot regard the 



