I 9 I 3 -I 9 I 4-] A Pair of Long-Eared Owls. 'jj 



immediately took wing and alighted near the nest, where she 

 called repeatedly and clearly a whee that was practically 

 identical with the ivhee of the male ; if it differed at all it 

 was slightly higher in pitch. Some time later she flew out of 

 the wood without having entered the nest, and one might be 

 left to conclude that upon this evening the male had per- 

 formed for both himself and his mate. The male certainly 

 seemed to have no doubts as to where the eggs should 

 be laid. 



On March 16 the male again awoke early, and again we 

 saw him working himself round in the nest in the same 

 sinistrous manner. While he was doing so the female 

 perched on a tree near the nest and called very regularly. 

 When the male departed after ten minutes in the nest, she 

 departed likewise but in the opposite direction, and we 

 thought she had left the wood. A little later, however, 

 she returned almost simultaneously with the male, and after 

 a short pause on a neighbouring branch, entered the nest. 

 In it she remained for nearly ten minutes, calling persistently, 

 but giving no sign of the rotating exercises of the male. At 

 7.13 — an hour after sunset — she flew off towards the north. 



In all this behaviour it is difficult to trace any definite 

 progress towards the purpose which both birds may have 

 been supposed to have had in view. We see the male very 

 firmly attached to the old Crow structure, leading the way 

 thither night after night, spending an increasingly longer 

 time in these inexplicable circumvolutions from left to right. 

 On the other hand, we have no further hint after March 1 

 of his bringing in food to the female. And then we have 

 that erratic creature, the female herself, hot the one night, 

 cold the next, moody or whimsical, which you will, never 

 quite sure of herself — never, might I suggest, quite sure of 

 either the male or the old Crow nest. She had ceased to 

 visit the honeysuckle, and she certainly showed a tendency to 

 linger longer in the neighbourhood of the roosting trees, but 

 this was accompanied by a manifest slackening in her interest 

 in the nest. On March 12 she had not gone to the nest at 

 all ; on March 1 6 she had only stayed a few minutes in it, 

 and we were, I confess, considerably perplexed. Had she 

 been an orthodox bird, proceeding on conventional lines, she 



