68 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 



numbers. This year two nested in the neighbour- 

 hood of Hickling Broad, and one of them 

 succeeded in hatching a brood. 



Quite recently the coarse grass, rush, or other 

 herbage growing round the Broads has acquired such 

 value as fodder for the London market, that in 

 some places every available blade is gathered in ; 

 and it is really no exaggeration to say that some 

 of the 'bus horses now trotting up and down the 

 Strand, breakfast off Water-hens' old nests, for they 

 are all raked up and forwarded with the rest of 

 the stuff, which, I understand, is greatly relished 

 by the animals to which it is given. The Short- 

 Eared Owl's nest figured in our illustration had 

 been discovered by the mowers of this coarse 

 fodder, and although they considerately left the 

 bird a patch of rushes and grass round her nest, 

 she deserted it. Alfred Nudd, of Hickling, says 

 that when the birds are mown out in this way they 

 generally desert the nest and make a new one 

 in the side of one of the heaps of fodder as it 

 'lies on the marsh. The nest in question ap- 

 peared to be only a slight natural hollow sparingly 

 lined with bits of dead rushes, and fairly well 

 hidden by overhanging standing herbage of the 

 same kind. 



The bird used to nest fairly plentifully in the 

 Orkney Islands, and as late as 1898 a collector 

 took no less than sixteen clutches of eggs. I 

 have met with the species very sparingly in the 

 Outer Hebrides, and years ago it used to breed round 

 my home on the North Yorkshire moors, but has 

 long since been banished by the gamekeeper from 

 the last-mentioned place. 



