LONG-EARED OWL. 135 
it makes a vigorous defence, throwing itself on its back, striking 
with its claws, and hissing and snapping with its bill. If provoked 
only, it merely makes a. querulous noise. A friend of Mr. 
Thompson’s, of Belfast, kept this and the preceding species 
instead of cats, and found them more effective as destroyers 
of rats and mice. They were, he says, ‘very fond of having 
their ears rubbed,’ 
The food of this Owl consists of leverets, rabbits, rats, mice, 
moles, sparrows, snipes, chaffinches, blackbirds, linnets, gold- 
finches, and other small birds, which it is said to surprise 
when at roost, as also of beetles and other insects. It seizes 
its prey with its bill, with which it carries it if not large, 
but if otherwise transfers it to its foot. 
Meyer says that the note is described by the word ‘hook.’ 
Nidification commences early in March. 
Other birds’ nests, such as crows, magpies, and ringdoves, 
are generally, if not always, fitted up by the one before us 
as its domicile, by flattening them and lining them with a 
few feathers or a little wool. It sometimes even locates itself 
in that of a squirrel, and is not deterred by its not being far 
from the ground. ‘Trees give it its ‘locus standi,’ evergreens, 
such as spruce, Scotch, and other firs, holly, and ivy, seeming 
to be preferred, especially in large woods. Ivy-covered rocks, 
and even the ground it also nestles on. It appears to be 
thought by some that there is a difference of eight or ten 
days in the laying of each egg, which are severally sat 
on in the intervals, causing a corresponding difference in 
the time of the young being hatched. “The Long-horned 
Owl,’ says Mudie, ‘generally takes possession of the deserted 
nest of some other bird, such as one of the crow tribe, which 
nestle earlier, and thus have their brood out of the nest by 
the time that the Owl lays.’ The Long-eared Owl, be it 
remembered, lays in March, and though I think that Mr. 
Macgillivray is rather too severe upon Mudie, whose work is 
actually described by Mr. Neville Wood, as one of ‘the two 
best which have yet appeared!’ yet I cannot forbear asking 
here ‘at what time does Rook-shooting commence?’ If the 
young Rooks have fled before March, they must have had but 
a cold berth of it in February! Such an imagination as 
this reminds me of a somewhat corresponding mistake developed 
in an illustrated London paper. ‘Our own correspondent,’ ‘on 
the spot’? I suppose, was describing the circumstance of Her 
Majesty’s witnessing the process of ‘shearing’ in the Highlands 
