SNOWY OWL. 57 



SURNIA NYCTEA (Linnseus). 

 SNOWY OWL. 



This rare and beautiful species has occurred several 

 times in this county, although an interval of nearly 30 

 years elapsed between the appearance of the earlier 

 recorded specimens and those more recently obtained. 

 Mr. Hunt, in his " British Ornithology," states that one 

 was shot at Felbrigg during the spring of 1814, and 

 adds "The weather had been previously exceedingly 

 severe during nearly three months. This specimen, we 

 are informed by the Kev. G. Glover, was presented to 

 Lord Stanley. * * * It had been observed for 

 several days standing on a heap of snow which had been 

 blown against a fir ; it had been often roused, and was 

 at length taken with difficulty." The same author sub- 

 sequently recorded a second example in his "List of 

 Norfolk Birds," published in Stacy's " History of Nor- 

 folk," which was said to have been shot at Gunton, 

 near Cromer, in January, 1820, and came into the 

 possession of the late Lord Suffield. From that time 

 I am not aware of any notice of its appearance on our 

 coast until the summer of 1847, when, as Mr. Gurney 

 informs me, a specimen, shot in the spring of that year, 

 by a gamekeeper at Beeston, on the estate of Mr. J. 

 Gurney Hoare, was, horribile dictu, seen by that gentle- 

 man hanging up as a scarecrow, and too much spoilt for 

 preservation. On giving directions, however, that if any 

 such bird should occur again, it was to be sent to him 

 in the flesh, Mr. Hoare received, in 1848, the beau- 

 tiful Greenland falcon from the same locality, already 

 referred to (p. 8) in the present work. In the early part of 

 1847, a large white owl was more than once observed in 

 i 



