Hawk Owl. 113 



the terrified and unsuspecting and certainly most unoffending 

 postman, whose daily visits to the house were at that time not 

 unattended with fear. 



25. THE HAWK OWL (Sumia funerea). 



In Swedish Hok Uggla; in France Chouette Caparacoch or 

 JEperviere, ' Sparrow - hawk Owl ' ; in Germany Sperbereule, 

 * Sparrow - hawk Owl/ and Habichtseule, 'Hawk Owl/ This 

 remarkable species, generally confined to the more northern 

 parts of Scandinavia and high northern latitudes in America, 

 has but very rarely come to the British Isles as a straggler. 

 Indeed, but half a dozen specimens only are known to have 

 visited us, and of these one was taken in Wiltshire, having 

 been killed during severe weather, some thirty or more 

 years since, by Mr. Long, then residing at Amesbury, and it was 

 given by him to Mr. Kawlence, of Wilton, in whose collection it 

 may now be seen. The Rev. A. P. Morres records that it was 

 exhibited at the Zoological Society of London on April 4th, 

 1876, as being the only authentic specimen of the European 

 Hawk Owl yet recorded as having been killed in England.; r As, 

 however, Professor Newton mentions other examples killed re- 

 spectively in Somersetshire, at Scaa in Unst, near Glasgow, and 

 near Greenock, and as the Scandinavian and American birds are 

 now, I believe, acknowledged to be precisely alike, I see no 

 grounds for supposing that our Wiltshire specimen hailed from 

 any other country than that which sent forth its fellows. Surely 

 the birds which occurred in Unst, at Glasgow, and at Greenock 

 have quite as much or more right to claim a European origin as 

 that which was killed on Salisbury Plain. But whatever its 

 native land, we esteem our Wiltshire bird as a visitor of no 

 slight interest. My old school-friend, the late Mr. John Wolley, 

 the very prince of modern ornithologists, and whose untimely 

 death naturalists have never ceased to lament during his resi- 

 dence in Northern Sweden and Lapland for the express purpose 

 of becoming acquainted with the birds of those countries, found 

 this species extremely abundant in Lapland; and he tells us 



