NOTE OF THE OWL.
In Gardiner’s “Music of Nature” the note of the brown owl is thus rendered:—
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Mr. Colquhoun, to whom allusion has just been made, says, that the music of the white or barn owl is a little different from that of the brown owls. It is only one prolonged cadence, lower and not so mournful as that of the tawny fellow.
It would appear that owls do not keep to one note. A friend of Gilbert White’s remarked that most of his owls hooted in B flat, but that one went almost half a note below A. The pipe by which he tried their notes was a common half-crown pitchpipe. A neighbour, also, of the Selborne naturalist, who was said to have a nice ear, remarked that the owls about Selborne hooted in three different keys: in G flat (or F sharp), in B flat, and A
flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat, the other in B flat.
It did not appear, however, whether the sounds proceeded from different species of brown owls, or from different individuals of the same species.
AN OWL ROBBING NESTS.
Another question in the life-history of the owl is raised by the following passage from Macbeth (Act iv. Sc. 2):—