122 SHORT-EARED OWL 
though as many as six are not unusual. They are usually 
placed in the old nest of a Magpie. 
Inhabiting nearly the whole of Britain, this species is in 
Ireland the commonest and most widespread of Owls. It 
occurs in Galloway and north-western England, apparently 
more locally than with us. It occurs from time to time 
in Orkney and Shetland, in the former of which it has bred, 
and has been reported from the Outer Hebrides. 
ASIO BRACHYOTUS (Forster). SHORT- 
EARED OWL. 
MarsH Ow. (Kermode). 
Though little known or distinguished in the island, this 
species is a regular visitor, and by no means scarce. Thus 
in January 1892* the Douglas bird-stuffer had four in hand 
at once. 
Mr. Kermode gives Ist September (1883), when one was 
shot by Mr. Kayll at Bride, as an early date for its occur- 
rence, which no doubt it is, but on 3rd July 1898 I saw one 
flying about the rocks on Langness, mobbed by small birds, 
a sight which reminded me of a similar scene witnessed 
in Shetland a month earlier, when the aggressors, however, 
were Gulls and Grey Crows. 
Dr. Crellin, in one of the already quoted series of letters 
to Mr. A. G. More, says of this Owl: ‘I do not think that it 
breeds here. There are a good many here in autumn and 
winter, but I think that they arrive about the same time as 
the Woodcock.’ He adds that ‘a friend saw a couple in a 
bog, on the mountains where I saw the Twites in March 
1 This was the time of the ‘ vole-plague’ in southern Scotland, but there are 
no voles in Man. , 
