j6 A Pair of Long-Eared Owls. [Sess. 



towards the north-west. What passed between the two birds 

 we cannot be certain ; we peered fruitlessly into the murk, 

 but the male probably brought in the result of his hunting — 

 a propitiatory offering to his mate. The unusual utterance of 

 the ivhee was plainly an expression of some special emotion 

 on the part of the female, while the fact that she had not 

 gone out of the wood, as was her customary practice, indicated 

 a kind of expectation that the male would return with food. 

 She was still in the wood when we departed twenty minutes 

 later. 



March 11 was stormy, and neither bird visited the nest 

 while we watched that evening. The next night, however, 

 was quiet, and as if to compensate for lost time, the male was 

 already calling when we arrived in the wood a few minutes 

 after sunset. This early rising, it may be noted, was a very 

 important matter from our point of view ; it meant that half 

 an hour of good daylight was available for our observations. 

 Ten minutes after our arrival both birds took wing and flew 

 away eastwards. Two minutes later the male came right 

 over our heads and pitched into the old Crow nest ; the next 

 moment we heard the call of the female from somewhere 

 behind us. The bird in the nest was at first silent, but at 

 last, thanks to the early rising, we had a glimpse of what he 

 did there. Quite clearly we saw him working his body 

 round in the nest ; seven or eight times he described the circle 

 and always from left to right. In the middle of these move- 

 ments he began to call, and, to our amazement, the call was 

 not the oo of the male but the whee of the female. It was 

 repeated a dozen times, and for a moment we wondered if our 

 eyes had failed to record a change of occupants in the nest, 

 but the next second we were assured of our unimpaired vision 

 by a ivhee from the bird behind us. The bird in the nest 

 was undoubtedly the male ; a little later he ceased calling, 

 and when he resumed again he was uttering the characteristic 

 oo. Why for that brief space he should have used the note 

 of the female may be added to the insoluble problems. It 

 has been flippantly suggested that his operations in the nest 

 may have turned his head in more senses than one. After 

 eighteen minutes in the old Crow structure he departed 

 towards the east with great clapping of wings. The female 



