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that it has been known with certainty to occur north of the Mediterranean, though as far back 

 as 1851 it was supposed to straggle to Spain. 



Kjserbolling, in his remarks on a collection made near Tangier, says (Naumannia, 1852, 

 Heft i. p. 10) "A friend of mine, a young medical man, Mr. Carstensen, of Copenhagen, who has 

 been spending last winter collecting ornithological specimens in Tangier, and has brought me 

 many well-prepared birds and eggs, assures me that this Owl inhabits the neighbouring coast of 

 Spain, and that he has seen it on passage there and back." Dr. Kjserbolling further says that 

 he has every reason to believe in the accuracy of this statement : and subsequent investigation 

 has proved its correctness; for Colonel Irby shot specimens in Spain in 1868. "In October 

 1868," he writes (Orn. Str. Gibr. p. 61), " on my first visit to Casa Vieja, when looking for Snipe 

 in one of the wettest parts of the Mill soto, two Owls rose at my feet, which I shot, winging one, 

 which I carried home alive to take to Gibraltar, seeing at once, from the bluish black colour of 

 the irides, that I had got an Owl which I did not know. Afterwards, hunting about, only one 

 more was seen, and killed. On the 10th of November following, during my second visit, I saw 

 three more, two of which I winged and also carried off alive to Gibraltar, keeping them there 

 for some time, till one got out and flew off as if nothing was the matter with it ; so I sent the 

 other at once to Lord Lilford, who had it alive till 1870. I met with no more till the 10th of 

 November 1870, when I shot one and picked up the remains of another. In October and 

 November 1871 I repeatedly and carefully went over the same ground, but did not see any, 

 while friends of mine there in August and September, whom I begged to look out for these 

 Owls, did not come across one. All the eight birds above mentioned were found within a space 

 of about a square mile; and, strange to say, I never saw any elsewhere. In December 1873, 

 Lieutenant Reid, of the Royal Engineers, shot one when Snipe-shooting in the same locality. 

 I was there in March and May 1874, and, though I hunted all the likely ground over, failed to 

 meet with even one." Except that Mr. Howard Saunders writes (Ibis, 1871, p. 65) that the first 

 specimen of which he has positive information was obtained near Utrera in November 1867, I 

 find no further record of its occurrence in Europe proper ; but on the African side of the Straits 

 of Gibraltar it is common. Carstensen states that it was found by him along the coast from 

 Tangier to Morocco, in marshy places, such as are frequented by the Short-eared Owl, and is 

 there resident ; and Favier writes (fide Colonel Irby, I. c.) that it is " a common resident near 

 Tangier, usually frequenting wet swampy ground, feeding chiefly on insects. Some pass over to 

 Europe in March and April, returning in November and December. They nest on the ground 

 in April or May, laying four, rarely five, round white eggs, sometimes marked with a few rusty 

 spots. The young are not always hatched at the same time, as in the same nest may be found 

 young birds of different growths." Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, in his notes on the ornithology of 

 Morocco (Ibis, 1869, p. 148) says: — "I came upon a colony of Asio cajaensis which had taken up 

 their abode in a patch of mallows, about half an acre in extent, by the side of a stream. There 

 were some twenty or thirty of them sitting solemnly blinking at me till I was within a few yards 

 of them, when they lazily flapped away. This is the only time I ever saw them in the open 

 country; in the wooded hills to the east they are common." According to Loche, it occurs on 

 passage in Algeria : but it does not seem to range to North-east Africa ; for Finsch and Hartlaub 

 and Von Heuglin express doubt as to its occurrence there, and the former state that the species 



