SUPPLEMENT TO BIRDS OF ESSEX COUNTY 113 



1919, I started a Great Horned Owl from the roosting-woods. On March 2, a 

 band of two hundred or more Crows was heard making a great outcry there, 

 and from their actions I concluded they were evidently mobbing and chasing a 

 Great Horned Owl, the disrupter of the roost. I had previously found Crows' 

 feathers in various places where these birds had been killed. 



171 [376] Nyctea nyctea (Linn.). 

 Snowy Owl. 



Irregular, but at times common visitor in the late autumn, less common in 

 winter and early spring. October 18 to April 18. 



In the winter of 1905-06 occurred a very large flight of the Snowy Owl, 

 larger probably than the great flight in tlie fall of 1876. For that flight, and the 

 smaller one of 1901-02, the Owls were fortunate in having Mr. Ruthven Deane"^ 

 as their historian. Mr. Deane " received records of some eight hundred speci- 

 mens from localities scattered from Nova Scotia west to Nebraska and from 

 Manitoba south to Missouri, showing that in this territory, at least, the flight had 

 been quite general." 



The records for Essex County I was able to collect of this flight and send to 

 Mr. Deane he enters as follows: "Two seen by himself in the Ipswich dunes, on 

 Nov. 5, 1905, and Feb. 11, 1906; five shot in the Ipswich dunes, November 25, 

 1905; one seen near Salem, Jan. i, 1906. At different dates during November 

 and December, 1905, and January, 1906, a gunner from Newburyport shot nine- 

 teen specimens, most of them being taken on Plum Island." Mr. Everett Gordon, 

 taxidermist of Lynn, reported one taken at Nahant on November 22, 1905, and 

 one at Gloucester on November 23. 



Mr. Damsell's^ records are for 1886, Nov. 26, Dec. 10; 1887, Feb. 10; 1889, 

 Nov. 8; 1890, Jan. 23, Nov. 28, Dec. 6, 11, 20, 24; 1891, Dec. 16; 1893, ^ov. 7; 

 1896, Nov. 16; 1901, Dec. 26, two, Dec. 28; 1902, Jan. 3, 11, 18, 25, Feb. 3, 4, 

 Apr. 3, Oct. 18, 23; 1903, Mch. 12; 1905, Nov. 21. 



Besides my own observations shortly to be related, I have also to record a 

 Snowy Owl seen at Ipswich by Mr. R. G. Vickery on April 18, 1907, one on 

 November 4, 191 1, at Plum Island by Mr. James L. Peters, and one on February 

 9, 1912, at Ipswich, by Mr. R. M. Marble. 



Since the manuscript for the original Memoir was handed to the printers, I 



1 Deane, R. Auk, vol. 23, p. 289-298, 1906, also p. 100. 

 " Allen, G. M. Auk, vol. 30, p. 25, 1913. 

 8 



