g in darkness, whereas the hawks--birds of
daylight--rear theirs in open nests, high up in trees or on rocky
ledges, in the full glare of the sun. One owl indeed habitually burrows
in the prairies and pampas, in the curious company of marmots and
rattlesnakes, and this burrowing habit is also, in some parts of the
United States, adopted by the common barn owl. Owls generally brood from
the laying of the first egg, with the obvious result that young birds in
various stages of plumage are found together in the nest. It has been
suggested that the body of the first to leave the egg helps to keep the
unhatched eggs warm while the parents are away foraging, else its
presence would be a serious handicap. The first little owl to hatch out
is usually ready to leave the nest soon after the arrival of the last,
though these chicks come into the world more helpless even than the
majority of birds.

NOVEMBER

WATERFOWL

WATERFOWL

Had these notes been written from the standpoint of sport, the three
familiar groups of birds, which together make up this world-wide aquatic
family, might better have borne their alternative title "wildfowl" with
its covert sneer at the hand-reared pheasant and artificially encouraged
partridge that, between them, furnish so much comfortable sport to those
with no fancy for the arduous business of the mudflats. It is true that,
of late years, the mallard has, in experienced hands, made a welcome
addition to the bag in covert shooting, as those will remember who have
shot the Lockwood Beat on the last day of the shoot at Nuneham; and
there is historic evidence of "wild" duck having been reared for
purposes of sport with hawks in the reign of Charles I. Yet such
armchair shooting of wildfowl was ignored by Colonel Hawker and the
second Earl of Malmesbury, both of whom, gunning in the creeks and
estuaries of the south coast, made immense bags of ducks and geese,
working hard for every bird and displaying Spartan indifference to the
rigours of wintry weather. To hardy sportsmen of their type, wildfowl
offer red-letter days with punt or shoulder guns, not to be dreamt of
under the aegis of the gamekeeper.

In this country, at any rate, we associate the V-shaped companies of
wigeon and gaggles of geese with an ice-bound landscape, though in
exceptional years, even where they no longer stay to breed, these
night-flying northerners linger to the coming of spring, and Hawker
noticed the curio