354 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



all the birds that inhabit every corner of East Aberdeenshire. I 

 possess stuffed specimens both of the Little Owl and the Scops Eared 

 Owl, but the bird I saw was certainly the former. — Douglas Ainslie 

 (26, Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, W.). 



Scops Eared Owl in Ireland. — A male was caught at the lantern of 

 the Fastnet Lighthouse on the night of the 6th May. The bird was a 

 male in beautiful plumage and condition, and is a rare visitor to 

 Ireland, only seven examples having been recorded. — W. J. Williams 

 (2, Dame Street, Dublin). 



Montagu's Harrier (Circus cineraceus) in Ireland. — A male in 

 transition plumage from the immature to the adult was trapped on a 

 Grouse-moor in June near Sallygap, Co. Wicklow. It was nailed up, 

 with other vermin, on the keeper's cottage, and was in an advanced 

 state of decomposition before reaching me for identification. It is 

 very curious that all the nine recorded captures of this rare species in 

 Ireland have occurred in two counties — Wicklow and Wexford ; five 

 were taken within an area of ten miles, at different periods, in Co. 

 Wicklow, and three in Co. Wexford. Two young birds were shot near 

 Gorey, September, 1899, and an adult male in May, 1890. — W. J. 

 Williams (2, Dame Street, Dublin). 



Supposed Breeding of the Rough-legged Buzzard in Cornwall 

 {ante, p. 284). — The statement in the last issue of ' The Zoologist,' on 

 the authority of Trathen and Harris, that the Rough-legged Buzzard 

 bred in Cornwall to about 1850, should not be allowed to pass without 

 a protest, especially as it has already been made in the recently issued 

 volume of the 'Victoria History of the County of Cornwall.' Sixty 

 years ago little was known as to the distribution of this bird in the 

 breeding season, and Hewitson, in the ' Supplement to British Oology ' 

 (1842), describes it as " an abundant species in some of the extensive 

 forests of Germany," and adds that he noticed several in the wilder 

 parts of Baden and Wirtemberg (sic). Now, there is nothing remark- 

 able in the fact of a northern species, whose southern limit extends to 

 the south of Germany, breeding in the British Isles ; so that the 

 naturalists of those days may perhaps be excused for their somewhat 

 easy credulity in accepting the rather unsatisfactory records of the 

 nesting of the species in Great Britain, especially as undoubted speci- 

 mens were not infrequently secured during the winter months, and the 

 Common Buzzard was then much more numerous than it is now, and 

 might easily be mistaken for it. Thomas Edward's assertion that it 

 bred near Banff in 1864 ; J. Smith's statement that it nested repeatedly 



