“And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noonday, in the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking.”
Of crook-backed Richard of Gloucester, too, he says:
“The Owl shrieked at thy birth, an evil sign,
The night-crow cried.”
Different parts of the White Owl’s body were supposed to possess different magical powers, and they have been used by many a rural imposter to breed awe in the credulous.
Happily all this is changed now excepting amongst a small ignorant minority. Of late years women who affected the fashion of wearing owls heads and wings on toques seemed likely to become the poor Owls’ worst enemy. Mr. Ward Fowler saw, not long ago, in a public house, this advertisement: “Wanted at once by a London firm, 1,000 owls.”
The late R. Bosworth Smith wrote: “The number of owls has been terribly diminished. Let them be encouraged and protected in every possible way. Let the gamekeeper be rewarded, as I have rewarded him myself, not for the owls he destroys, but for the owls he preserves.... Let the owl be regarded and protected in England as the stork is regarded and protected in Holland!”
The Long-eared Owl is 15 inches in length. The upper parts are a warm buff, mottled and pearled with brown and grey and streaked with dark brown, bill black, dark markings about the eyes, facial disk buff with greyish black margin and outer rim. The long erectile tufts are streaked with dark brown. The eyes are a rich yellow. Under parts warm buff and grey with broad blackish streaks and small transverse bars. Legs covered to the toes with fawn coloured feathers. The eggs, four to six in number, are laid with us in an old squirrel’s drey or on the old nest of a Ringdove, a Magpie, Rook, Crow, or Heron’s nest; in Hungary often in that of a Buzzard or a Kite, with a few slight sticks and rabbits’ fur added. They are white, the surface smooth but not glossy. As a rule this species does not hoot like the Tawny Owl, but is rather silent.
USEFUL.
