Ule, the 
Little Owl. 
(144) THE BIRD WORLD. 
sportsmen, must be killed in order to 
prove that they were something different 
from the birds common in the district. 
Ule Starts Housekeeping. 
They were, however, fortunate, for 
now that spring had come but few people 
carried guns, and the home they selected 
was in a hollow tree not far from the 
water, and where few folk went. They 
wandered together up and down the 
neighbouring land until at last Ule’s 
mate, Brown-wing, stayed in the hole 
where they made their home, and did 
not come away until she had left a 
round, white-shelled egg; she added 
to it day by day, until there were seven 
of her treasures on the rotten wood and 
feathers which formed the bottom of 
the nest. 
Carefully , she kept guard over them, 
sitting closely and only leaving for a 
short interval occasionally, while Ule 
took his station upon a rough stump 
under the shelter of the adjoining hedge¬ 
row, where he ate all his catches which 
his mate did not need. 
Cruel Robbers Came. 
One day, after she had sat for about 
a week, two men came by, and seeing 
the hole in the tree, one of them swung 
himself up by the branches and looked 
in where Brown-wing was covering her 
precious eggs; at first he could see 
nothing as it was dark inside, and while 
he was peering in, Brown-wing slipped 
up a long, hollow branch and flew 
away; soon, however, he saw the eggs 
at the bottom of the hole, and taking 
one out, uttered an exclamation of 
astonishment, for they were eggs he did 
not know; the other man saw Brown¬ 
wing fly, and he, too, was puzzled, but 
Ule flying from the hedgerow, sealed 
the fate of the eggs, for the men guessed 
what the birds were, and as they were 
rarities, the eggs must, of course, be 
taken in defiance both of law and of the 
men’s own better judgment, leaving 
Ule and his mate to grieve over their 
loss. 
The men often came to watch for the 
birds, and soon they found that another 
batch of eggs was being laid in a hole 
in an adjoining tree, but now their 
collecting craze has been satisfied, and 
their only fear is that others as heartless 
as themselves will find the new home 
and harry it. 
The Rearing of Their Family. 
This time the birds are successful in 
keeping their treasures, and the eggs 
are hatched, and four little balls of 
down appear, ugly and shapeless, as 
Ule was himself when he first saw the 
dim light of the hollow tree where he 
was born. 
A busy time the parents have until the 
youngsters can hunt for themselves, but 
they do not have so free a time as Ule 
and his brothers and sisters had, for 
they are in more dangerous quarters, 
and before the winter, two of them are 
shot, but the others learn a lesson from 
their deaths, and manage to keep clear 
of danger until the time comes when Ule 
and his mate drive them away to seek 
their fortune by themselves. 
They wander, as Ule did before 
them, but not so far as he, keeping to 
the open park-like country full of the 
old timber, which they loved so much, 
until they too find mates and make them¬ 
selves a home. Ule and his mate keep 
to the two trees by the waterside, and 
year after year rear broods with varied 
fortune until the birds are known almost 
as well as any others of the countryside, 
and so are less in danger than when they 
came as strangers to a new land. 
