28 BIRDS OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO 



Mr. Jerdon states that it arrives in India at the beginning of the 

 cold weather, and leaves again about March, spreading itself in 

 the interval over the entire Peninsula, from Cape Comorin to the 

 Himalayas, and being often flushed and killed by the Florican 

 hunters. Every country of the European Continent enumerates 

 it in the list of its avifauna. It is common on the Amur, and 

 doubtless in every part of China. In America, it frequents the 

 fur countries in the summer, and at other seasons the whole of 

 the Northern States, from east to west. We have ourselves 

 been enabled to compare specimens from the Straits of 

 Magellan, Brazil, and North America, with others from every 

 part of Africa and India, all of which were so strictly similar in 

 their markings and size that it was impossible to distinguish 

 them. In Australia, New Zealand, and Polynesia it has never 

 been found ; neither have I any reason to suppose that it is a 

 native of any of the Indian Islands, such as Borneo, Java, the 

 Philippines, and Japan ; everywhere else this flapping diurnal 

 Owl appears to be either a constant resident or a migrant." 



" In England, this bird is known to sportsmen as the Wood- 

 cock Owl, from the circumstance of its numbers being greatly 

 augmented about the time of the arrival of that bird in November ; 

 in all probability, both species are under the same influence, and 

 compulsorily leave the coast of Norway with the first favourable 

 wind. In November, then, great accessions to the numbers of 

 this bird are observed to take place on our eastern shores, whence 

 they spread themselves over the entire country, and are frequently 

 to be met with, in the latter part of the Partridge-season, among 

 the great turnip-fields and low sedgy flats of Norfolk, Suff'olk, 

 Cambridge, and Huntingdon shires. Certain districts are 

 occasionally overrun with the common field mouse to such an 

 extent that the young plantations would be entirely destroyed, 

 were their numbers not kept down by the Short-eared Owl. 

 Instances are on record of from ten to twenty being seen 

 together ; and hence it has been regarded by some as a gregarious 

 bird, which indeed it is, so long as there is an abundance of this 

 kind, but no longer : the mice failing, it feeds upon any other 



