On the other hand, there is sometimes good reason for modifying any plea for kindness to owls. Handsome is as handsome does, and many of these birds are, during the nesting season, not only savage in defence of their young, but actually so aggressive as to make unprovoked attack on all and sundry who unwittingly approach closer to the tree than these devoted householders think desirable. Accounts of this troublesome mood in nesting owls come from several parts of the country, and notably from Wales. In one case on record a pair of barn owls had their home in a tree overlooking Milford Haven, and the vicinity of the nest soon became dangerous. The male owl tore a boy's ear, knocked a man down, and attacked numerous human beings and dogs that made use of a path leading past the tree; and these episodes were in fact of daily occurrence until some one shot the bird. Another pair of barn owls nested in a wood on the shore of Menai Strait, and in this case the young birds managed to fall out of the nest, and lay on the ground in full view of a public right of way. Why the old birds did not put their offspring back in the nest no one knew. Possibly they realised that the talons, which so efficiently gripped rats, might not prove gentle enough for the transport of owlets. At any rate, whatever their reason, they left the young birds on the ground, feeding them in that position, and flew at everyone who passed that way, clawing face and ears, and eventually establishing a reign of terror. Another owl behaved in somewhat similar fashion in a spinney close to Axmouth, South Devon, punishing a coastguard so severely that the man took to his heels. Such determined tactics in defence of the young are the more singular when we remember that owls are, in normal circumstances, shy and retiring birds. Yet they occasionally seem to be possessed by more sociable instincts, in proof of which one of the long-eared kind has been seen feeding in the company of tame hawks; a pair of owls once nested in a dovecote close to a keeper's lodge in the Highlands; and wild owls have been known to pay nightly visits to a cage in the Botanic Gardens at Launceston (Tasmania), in order to bring food to their captive friends.