Page:Condor13(1).djvu/18

 18 THE CONDOR Vol. XIII tree-tops. It will be noted that the owlets remained in the nest about two weeks longer in 1907 than in 1906. One youngster was in the very top braiaches of the old elm of his nativity, fully fifty feet above the deserted home or more than seventy feet above the ground; another was a hundred yards away in the timber tract and some eighteen feet up in a linden; both were motionless and inconspicu- ous among the budding branches. In the time at disposal the tlfird brother could not be fonnd. Two days before this the young had shown neither inclination nor ability to fly. It seems certain that no one of them could have mounted a vertical distance of fifty feet through any powers Fig. 13. THE OXVL HOME OF 1908; A VAIN LOOK ALOFT of his own. The conclusfon seenas in- evitable that in some way the old birds carried the young to the places where I found them. But the secret belongs to the owls, for no one witnessed the leave- taking. A little more than two months passed by and on a walk through their now heavily-foliaged retreat two great heavy owls, seemingly, and doubtless actually, larger than adults, were startled from the ground near some prostrate tree trunks, from which they flew slowly into the near- by trees. Almost at the same moment a third dropped from the lower branclaes of an oak and took up a new position deeper in the shadows of the woods. So far as mere size was concerned the owlets had reached and even surpa.sed the adult owl estate, though probably still under the care and tutelage of their elders. From now on they would need to shrink and harden into the strength and agility nec- e&sary to enter the coinpetition of adult owl life and maintain themselves in the general struggle for existence. February of 1908 again found Mr. Smith and me rapping anxiously at the old elm of the timber pasture. With the facilities at our disposal we could accom- plish little more with the yonng birds, but during the year we had formulated a plan by which there might be a bare pos- sibility of securing a portrait of the old owl as she sat within her doorway. Onr hopes were raised by the reports of both Mr. Benedict and Mr. McFarland that, as the nesting season approached, the owls had been heard hooting as usual. Our mis- givings began when we found piled about the nest-tree the cord-wood from a num- ber of the neighboring young lindens. The old nest cavity was found empty. The owls were able to endure intrusion into their home life for two seasons, but evi- dently did not take kindly to radical changes in their immediate environment. A mile west of the old home is another forest fragment of perhaps sixty acres