THE SHORT-EARED OWL. 91 



As the dunlin is a shore bird, it may be remarked, that this owl 

 is occasionally to be met with along the grassy margin of Belfast 

 bay. 



Capt. Portlock, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 

 (vol. i. p. 52), mentions, on information communicated to him by 

 Serjeant Neely, collector for the Ordnance Survey, that these 

 birds are regular autumnal visitants to the rabbit-warren at Magil- 

 ligan, county of Londonderry, and have been seen at the entrance 

 of the burrows, within which they retired when disturbed ; more 

 than one was shot on emerging from the holes, and one was taken 

 in a trap placed at the entrance of a burrow, when making its 

 exit thence. As remarked by Captain Portlock, this habit brings 

 to mind the burrowing owl of America, Strix cunicularia. By 

 naming this species, the chord is touched which bears the imagi- 

 nation to far distant regions, and is therefore extremely pleasing ; 

 but there does not seem to me any analogy between the two cases. 

 It is the general and natural habit of the American bird to live 

 and breed within the burrows of the marmot, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Rocky mountains ; while we can only regard the S. 

 bracliyotus as a mere accidental tenant of the deserted dwelling of 

 the rabbit in a particular locality. 



A serjeant, who had been attached to the Ordnance Survey, 

 informed me, that he saw a white owl also fly into a rabbit-hole 

 at Magilligan, and by means of a trap, the bird was captured 

 when coming out. 



Dublin (1772), applies better to the short-eared, than to any other species of British 

 owl : — " Owls are useful about stacks of corn, to destroy the mice, and the more 

 necessary, as these are great breeders. They were of singular use to the inhabitants 

 of Kent, and marshes of Essex, A.D. 1581, when they had a sore plague of strange 

 mice suddenly covering the earth, and gnawing the grass-roots, which poisoned all 

 herbage, and raised the plague of murrain among cattle grazing on it ; no wit or art 

 of man could destroy these mice, until another strange flight of owls came and killed 

 them all." 



A like observation is given us from Market-Downham, in the London Magazine, 

 1754, where we are told that the parishioners pay almost the same veneration to the 

 Norway owls, [Strix brachyotus ?] as the Egyptians did to the Ibis, and will not 

 at any rate annoy them, on account of their coming to them and destroying the 

 field-mice, with which they are infested commonly once about six or seven years, and 

 which otherwise, like locusts, would devour their corn of every kind. Young owls 

 are eaten in Norfolk, and it is a proverb among them, as tender as a boiled owl. 



