134 Hon. T. L. Powys on Birds 



a Peregrine Falcon stooped at him, and, just missing him, rose, 

 and " made her point." I drove the Owl out, and I was wit- 

 ness of a beautiful flight across an open plain of considerable 

 extent ; the Falcon making repeated feints, the Owl flying low, 

 and dodging round the scanty thorn-bushes, till he at length 

 reached a hill-side thickly covered with wild olives, amongst 

 which he plunged, and set his pursuer at defiance. The Alba- 

 nian and Greek specimens of this Owl which I have examined 

 struck me as much lighter-coloured and rather smaller than 

 those from Spain, Sicily, France, Germany, and Norway. 



30. Short-eared Owl. {Otus hrachyotus.) 



I saw two of this species near Prevesa in March 1857 ; and 

 two or three were brought into the Corfu market in the latter 

 part of the same month. I killed one at Butrinto in February 

 1858. The Corfu bird-stuifer told me that this Owl occasion- 

 ally visits the island in March in great numbers. 



31. Little Owl. [Athene noctua.) 



I believe this species to be a summer visitor to Epirus. We 

 found it nesting in the ruins of Nicopolis in March 1857, and 

 at Santa Quaranta in May. It is rare in Corfu. 



32. Scops Eared Owl. {Scops zorca.) 



Very common in Corfu during the summer months, arriving 

 about the beginning of April, and breeding in the old olive- 

 groves, which, from that time till the middle of October, resound 

 with their melancholy and monotonous cry. The favourite food 

 of a Scops Owl which I kept alive at Corfu for some months 

 was the Humming-bird Moth, which abounds in the island in 

 August and September. I observed one of this species in the 

 island as late as the 17th November, 1857. I was gravely 

 assured by a Spanish lady that this species and the Barn Owl 

 enter the chapels and churches in Andalusia to drink the oil in 

 the lamps which are kept burning in the shrines of the saints, 

 and that it behoved all good Christians to slay them whenever 

 they found them, adding, " Son las gallinas del demonio, Senor." 



33. AsH-coLouRED Shrike. [Lanius excubltoi'.) 



I observed this bird once in Montenegro, in August 1857. 



