Dad Saves Eagle!!

As a child in Lymm, Cheshire, in the 1930s, my pals and I found 2 owlets hiding in the exposed roots of a tree on the rim of a little valley. Thinking that they had dropped out of a nest and been abandoned, we used to pinch meat from home and take it to feed them. One lunchtime I went alone, and kneeling to see the young birds, I felt a very hard bang on the back of my neck, and thinking that someone had crept up and hit me as a joke, I turned round, to see the big parent owl flying over the valley and coming close again. I leapt to my feet and ran home. She was certainly protecting her chicks ! Sitting at the lunch table my mother suddenly screamed "Where's all that blood on your neck from?" and I realised that the owl's talons had wounded me. My father wrote a letter to the local paper's "Nature column" telling the story. It was printed and he got a payment of 2/6. The mean old bugger didn't even give me a penny of it !