A FEW AUTUMN NOTES. 575 



the right bank of the Moldau and near Prague I saw no 

 Short-eared and only a very few Long-eared Owls, though 1 

 often rambled through them at that time. 



On the 23rd andr 24th of November the weather was quite 

 spring-like, with a strong south wind. The snow melted very 

 quickly, and winter, which had shown itself so unmistakably, 

 again completely disappeared. 



On the 25th I once more went to the spot so often men- 

 tioned, where to my no small surprise I found considerable 

 numbers of both species of Owl; and next day I saw several 

 in a wood near Pardubitz in the east of Bohemia, but they 

 were all Long-eared. On the 27th both species were very 

 abundant in a small patch of oaks a few miles north of Prague. 

 These birds must have been on migration, for I found many of 

 them in the surrounding fields, where the hollows, ditches, 

 mounds, and stone-pits afforded them but scanty cover, and 

 they were even on the ploughed land. 



At the end of November I could no longer ramble about 

 the neighbourhood, for I had to travel for some days; and on 

 my return in the beginning of December I found that the 

 whole country was covered with deep snow, and that the 

 severe cold had brought on winter again. 



On December 6th I met with a great many Owls of both 

 kinds in two little woods north of Prague. This surprised 

 me, for though the first snowfall had quite driven them away, 

 they had remained during the second, which was much 

 heavier and lasted longer. 



It struck me as remarkable that at a time when there were 

 so many mice the Bough-legged Buzzard (Buteo lagopus) 

 should be so very uncommon. In other years, even when 

 comparatively few were ravaging the fields, the first of 

 these birds came at the end of October, while the main body 

 followed from the beginning to the middle of November, and 

 every year there were days when numbers of them might be 



