66 BritiISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 
sportsman is greatly astonished when he sees two or three cherubic looking Owls 
rise solemnly before his dogs, instead of the expected covey, and flying off with 
a buoyant, gull-like, flight. The Owls soon drop into cover, but become wild if 
again disturbed, and will not permit a close approach, not unseldom mounting by 
circles high into the air, even if there be bright sunshine, and disappear out of 
sight. The writer has moved one in the day-time from a dead Peewit, whose 
head it had just torn off, after the manner of Owls, for its first bite, showing 
that this species is not entirely nocturnal. but will occasionally hunt for its prey 
during the day. The Short-eared Owl is often found in the winter time con- 
gregated in some numbers; indeed, it is rare to flush a single bird, as there are 
generally three or four on the ground close together; on sand hills on the coast 
the writer has put up over twenty at a time, and it was,not a little amusing to 
see so many on wing at once, circling round, and then dropping one after the 
other into the rushes. On the curious peat-moor district in Mid-Somerset the 
Short-eared Owl is sometimes abundant, and the writer has flushed more Owls 
than Snipe in a day’s shooting. One of the Owls once perched on the top of a 
large furze bush to watch the movements of the shooting-party, the only instance, 
in the writer’s experience, of its alighting on anything like a tree, although he 
has occasionally seen it perched on the top of a wall. On the Lincolnshire 
coast the Short-eared Owl is commonly captured in the flight-nets stretched for 
wild fowl in the autumn. 
This species has a very wide range, being found in most parts of the world; 
it is distributed over Europe, Asia, America, both north and south, over Africa, as 
far south as Natal, being a winter visitor to the southern limits of its range, and 
in some countries it is only seen on passage in spring and autumn. A few used 
to breed regularly in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, especially preferring 
the fens, and there may be still a few pairs nesting in certain protected spots. 
Its nest has been found in single instances in Devonshire, Hants, and Pembroke- 
shire; several in Cardiganshire, in 1874, on Sir Pryse Pryse’s estate. In the 
northern counties it is more frequent as a nesting species on the moors, and it 
nests commonly throughout Scotland. In the years from 1888—1891, when the 
common field-voles multiplied to such an extent as to become quite a plague in 
some of the Scotch lowland counties, a great number of Short-eared Owls were 
attracted by the abundance of their favourite food, and nests of these birds were 
found in the fields containing upwards of a dozen eggs, proving that, like other 
members of the Owl family, this species becomes extra prolific when it can obtain 
plenty of food. When the voles were at last all destroyed, many of the Owls 
were picked up starved and dead upon the ground; the instinct that had brought 
