312 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Long-eared Owl — strikingly like a gate swinging on unoiled hinges.* I 

 went into the covert, and made out that the noise was coming from a 

 tree, and also from on or near the ground ; but when I got close to 

 the spot whence the sound seemed to come it ceased, and I could find 

 nothing. To-night I went to the place at eight o'clock, and soon found 

 a Long-eared Owl in down with incipient ear-tufts. The primaries 

 were showing, but the bird was quite unable to fly. It was sitting on 

 a branch of a small dead fir, about four feet from the ground, bolt up- 

 right, with wings and downy feathers pressed close to its body, and 

 looked in that position very attenuated. The toes were two and two, 

 on either side of the branch. When I touched the bird it hissed like a 

 swearing Cat, snapped its mandibles, making quite a loud noise, and 

 attempted to bite. It then lowered its head, arched its wings so that 

 the secondaries met above its back, and spread the primaries on either 

 side, presenting the whole upper surface of its wings to the enemy, and 

 so increasing its apparent bulk very considerably. At the same time 

 it puffed out its body-feathers, and snapped and hissed. It did not wag 

 its head as an angry Barn-Owl does, but remained rigid for some 

 seconds. This attitude, which is no doubt a terrifying one, was assumed 

 whenever I touched or alarmed the bird. About thirty yards from the 

 tree on which the young bird was, I found the nest in a Scotch-fir, 

 some thirty feet from the ground — apparently an old Sparrow-Hawk's 

 nest had been utilized— and on it was a second young bird standing 

 bolt upright. Beneath the tree and one near it were many pellets, and 

 the wings attached to the plucked body of a Swallow. 



" A clamorous crew of Blackbirds and Song-Thrushes, with at least 

 one Mistle-Thrush among them, was in the meantime mobbing one of 

 the old Owls, chasing it from fir to fir in the covert. About 8.30 the 

 birds stopped mobbing the Owl, which then came into a fir near the 

 nest, and called loudly 'woof, woof, oo-ack, oo-ack, oo-ack. 'f The 

 Thrushes never molested it after I first heard it call, but sang in the 

 trees, some of them close to the nest, for some time. The old Owl, 

 from 8.30 until 9.15, when I left, was constantly calling ' oo-ack, 

 oo-ack,' both when perched and when on the wing, but I only heard 

 the barking ' woof, woof ' once or twice after the initial cry. Just 

 about the time that the old one began to call, the young ones started 



* This note, which I take to be the hunger-cry of the young, is a familiar 

 sound in our local fir-woods in spring ; it is Mr. Gyngell's Sound No. 2, which 

 he writes " kyiark " (ante, p. 183). 



f These are possibly the barking or "quacking" noises alluded to by 

 Mr. Howard Saunders (' Manual of British Birds,' 2nd edit. p. 294). 



