50 CLARKE: THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



other instances of this rare visitor to Britain having occurred 

 in Yorkshire, and in the following enumeration of them, Prof. 

 .Newton's remark (Yarrell's Birds, ed. 4, p. 170) as to the 

 probability of many of the British examples being escapes from 

 captivity, is particularly applicable to those specimens which 

 have occurred during the summer months. 



One shot at Horton near Bradford about the year 1824, is 

 mentioned by the late Mr. Henry Denny in his Catalogue of 

 Yorkshire birds contributed in 1840 to the Annals of Natural 

 History (vol. 7). 



Mr. Thomas Allis mentions one taken alive in a wood near 

 Harrogate in the summer of 1832. This specimen was purchased 

 by Mr, George Lane Fox of Bramham, and is now in the York 

 museum. 



Mr. Patrick Hawkridge of Scarborough communicated to 

 Neville Wood's Naturalist (1838, p. 155) a note of the capture of 

 a specimen off Flamborough Head. The bird, after alighting 

 upon the mast of a sloop sailing by, was with difficulty secured, 

 after it had "actually pinned down with its pow^erful talons the 

 cabin boy, who had been sent aloft to seize it." 



The example mentioned by the Rev. F. O. Morris (Brit. 

 Birds, 1851, vol. i., p. 184) as shot in the woods at Clifton Castle 

 near Bedale, in the month of March, 1845, proved — as the result 

 of inquiries made through my obliging correspondent Mr. James 

 Carter of Masham — to be a bird escaped from Hornby Castle, the 

 residence of the Duke of Leeds. A letter from Mr. Wilie, the 

 Duke's agent, describes the bird as being from the forest at Mar 

 Lodge, N.B. 



Mr. C. C. Hanson of Greetland near Halifax, informs me 

 that on a very dark day in November, 1845, he snapped an old 

 flint gun at an Eagle Owl, but the gun missing fire as usual, the 

 owl stared at him for a moment "with eyes like a leopard," then 

 off it went. Mr. Hanson had approached quite close by the aid 

 of an intervening stack. 



Trans. Y.N.U., 1S79 (pub. 1880). Series B 



