Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/160

136 the day, however, was coarse and windy enough to have driven any migratory bird out of its reckoning, and October is the migrants' month.

31st.—S.W. Messrs. Mortimer and Ramm saw ten Bluethroats on the coast (Pashley), but did not molest them. This is the latest date any have been seen, but it was a remarkably warm day for the time of year.

10th.— W.S.W. A Barn-Owl of the fulvous type shot at Lowestoft (H. Bunn). Fulvous examples are generally supposed to be of foreign origin, and the high wind from S.W. last night may have brought it over. This Scandinavian race was first recognized in England in 1864 by the late Henry Stevenson.

11th.—We have a very late Barn-Owl's nest in an elm-tree in a hole in an arm four feet deep and a foot wide about, and how the old bird gets down to the young ones and then returns is somewhat of a mystery. Barn-Owls, like Wood-Pigeons, are distinctly irregular in their time of nesting. They generally make use of a tree, but a hollow arm is safer. Here they construct no nest, and any sticks which may be found are sticks which have been brought in by a former owner. If disturbed they often try to impart terror into the intruder by a ludicrous swaying to and fro of the body, which at the same time is attenuated by muscular contraction of the feathers. Other Owls have their characteristic ways of defiance, but quite different from the habits of our mousing favourite, the Barn-Owl, whose white body seen swaying in the dark quickly shows a fresh comer that the residence is occupied. In this instance they selected a hole which in a previous season had produced a brood of young Tawnys.

20th.—Another Barn-Owl's nest, containing only two young ones, however—one of them in the down, and the other almost as fully feathered as its parents—an extraordinary contrast, for the elder bird may have sat upon and hatched the egg from which the younger one came. Two is a very small family, for the Barn-Owl will sometimes have six, and I have twice found as many as seven eggs. When the young are nearly half-grown they make a peculiar wheezing or snoring sound, which, I believe,