44 OWLS 



in the winter a considerable respite one might 

 remark from their evil doings and have nine diffe- 

 rent cries, a promising field, one might remark 

 again, for the craft of the augur. So much for the 

 great imperial owl and the terrors which it inspired 

 even in imperial Rome ! 



The short-eared owl differs in many respects 

 from the other owls of which I am writing. To 

 begin with, he is a bird of passage, which, appearing 

 along with the woodcock in the autumn and 

 disappearing with him in the spring, and flushed as 

 he often is, like the woodcock, in boggy ground and 

 having the same kind of drifting zig-zag flight, is 

 often known as the " woodcock owl." He is more 

 partial in his distribution over the country than his 

 fellows, being fairly common in the eastern counties 

 in which he first alights from his long southward flight, 

 but rare in the Midlands and the West. I have in 

 my possession the skin of one which was killed many 

 years ago, on Knighton Heath near Stafford, Dorset, 

 and seven were flushed together two years running, 

 last year and this, in a turnip field at Milborne, in the 

 same county. But this was quite exceptional His 

 head is smaller, his eyes less prominent, his form 

 more lissom than those of other owls. He haunts 

 not the deep dark woods, but the bare bog or moor- 



