LONG-EAEED OWL — SHORT-EARED OWL. 37 



at Stanton Harcourt, on the 13th June^ 1886. In Apiil^ 

 1887, I detected the remains of two Long--eared Owls on a 

 keeper^s ' gallows ' in Bruern Wood. 



The Long-eared Owl was formerly considered to be merely 

 a winter visitor, the Messrs. Matthews including it as such 

 without further remark. Although, considering its habit of 

 frequenting woods, and its shy and retiring disposition, it is 

 perhaps more common as a resident than is supposed, yet 

 most of the Long-eared Owls killed in winter are undoubtedly 

 migrants; in some years a good many have been brought to 

 the bird-stuffers^ shops at that season, notably in 1879-80, 

 when the Short-eared Owl, the next species on our list, was 

 also abundant. 



THE SHORT-EARED OWL. "'^ 



Asio accipitrinus. 



The Short-eared Owl is a winter visitor, a year seldom 

 passing without a few being shot, and in some seasons they 

 are abundant. On the 5th February, 1881, I flushed three 

 together in a rough hassocky meadow near Adderbury, and it 

 is sufficiently well known to some people in the comity to 

 have the local name of ' Marsh Owl.'' The earliest date for 

 its arrival in autumn which has come under my notice is the 

 I st October. During its stay with us it remains hidden in the 

 daytime in thick herbage and undergrowth, and in turnip 

 fields, and is seldom seen to perch upon trees, f requentiug open 

 ground, and often haunting low-lying fields and meadows, over 

 which it may be seen flying in the early dusk. 



Birds in both the grey and rufous phas s of j^lumage occur, 

 but in the former dress they are rare; in the winter of 1879- 

 80, when these owls visited us in some numbers, several grey 

 birds were obtained, but in the following season, when they 

 were even more abundant, all that I examined were warmly 

 coloured. 



