290 THE SHORT-EAEED OWL. 



open fields, where it roosts on the ground. It is occasionally 

 found by partridge-shooters during the autumn and winter 

 months, amongst heather, ferns, or rushes, in turnips, or 

 by the grassy side of a hedge or ditch. On being flushed 

 during the day, it does not seem to be bewildered by the 

 light, but generally flies off with a buoyant flight to some 

 distance, and again alights amongst thick herbage on the 

 ground. It very seldom perches on a tree. 



The Short-Eared Owl feeds chiefly upon field-mice, for 

 which it hunts moorlands, fields, and the sides of hedges, 

 in the dusk of the evening; but it is sometimes seen 

 quartering the ground in search of prey during the hours of 

 daylight. 



Some of the Border counties suffered greatly from im- 

 mense swarms of field-mice^ {Arvicola agrestis) from 1875 to 

 1877, the district most seriously affected being a cluster of 

 farms at the head of Borthwick Water, which falls into the 

 Teviot about three miles above Hawick. The mice de- 

 stroyed the roots of the herbage" to such an extent that the 

 sheep-farmers suffered great loss amongst their flocks, and 

 various plans were tried to get rid of the enemy, with little 

 success ; but meanwhile many rapacious birds, including 

 Short-Eared Owls, appeared on the scene, and helped to 

 clear the little depredators off the ground. Sir Walter 

 Elliot, in his interesting report on " The Plague of Field- 

 Mice on the Border Farms in 1876-7," refers to the syste- 

 matic destruction of all kinds of birds of prey (whose part in 

 the economy of nature is to keep the smaller animals within 

 due bounds) as having helped to produce the plague.^ 



1 The excessive propagation of the field-mice at this period is helieved to have 

 been caused by the general mildness of the seasons from 1870-76. — Hist. Her. 

 Nat. Club, vol. viii. pp. 459, 460. 



2 This is called "Spret" by the border shepherds. — Hist. Ber. Nat. Club, 

 vol. viii. p. 470. 



3 Hist. Ber. Nat. Club. vol. viii. pp. 447-468. 



