After sunset a swarm of cockchafers whirred and flipped about the top of the larch, and the owl, hungry after huddling still for fifteen hours, flapped up through the maze of cone-knotted twigs and caught two in its feet. It ate them in the air, bending to take them in its beak; and when it had caught and swallowed a dozen, it let out a quavering hoot to its mate--for the tawny owls liked to be near each other in their hunting--and, perched on a low branch of another tree, listened and watched for a young rabbit. After a few moments, its head was tilted sharply downward: the otter and the cubs were going through the wood. At midnight the western sky was pale blue and hollow like a mussel-shell on a seashore. The light lingered on the hill-line, where trees were dark. Under the summer stars a hundred swifts were screaming as they played away the night, two miles above the earth; in fine weather they kept on the wing for many days and nights together, never roosting. Their puny screams were heard by Tarka as he rubbed his neck against the grassy mound of an ants' nest. While he was enjoying the feeling, a loud chakkering noise came down from the wood. The otters swung round. Four heads pointed towards the trees. The bitch ceased to nibble her fur; the other cubs forgot their play with the head of a corncrake. The noise, distinct in the dewfall, was met by other cries as harsh and angry. When the curious otters reached the wood, other noises were mingled with the chakkering. Green points of light glinted in the undergrowth about them, like moonlight in dewdrops, for many vairs were watching a fight of the two dog-fitches on the woodland path. Running along the bank of a ditch beside the path, the fitches had met at the mouth of a drainpipe, out of which strayed a hunger-making smell. The pipe, covered with grass sods, lay beside an oak-log felled for a path across the ditch. Both ways had been made by the keeper; one for himself, and the other for fitches and vairs, whose liking for pipes and covered ways he knew. There were many such ways in the wood, and to make them more attractive, the keeper had placed the flesh and entrails of dead rabbits inside the pipes. Each dog-fitch was trying to break the other's neck by a bite behind the ear. They rolled and snapped and scratched with their long claws, their black-tipped tails twitching with rage.