lOG 
BIRDS OF LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND. 
the dead bird was taken away to be stuffed, then only did they desert the place 
never to return. We never saw them again, and last year there was no 
wagtail’s nest in that court. 
E. W. 
Wednesday, January 4. 
1888.” 
In Rutland. — As in Leicestershire. — Mr. Horn i-eports that in 188G he 
obtained four eggs from the following nests : — Sedge-Warbler’s (two) ; Hedge- 
Sparrow’s (one) ; Robin’s (one). 
Order STEIGES. 
Family STEIGID^. 
BARN-OWL. Strix fiammea, Linnaeus. 
“ Screech-Owl,” “ White Owl.” 
Resident, and generally distributed. — This bird has more than once visited the 
portico of the Museum at night. Twice during 1884-5 I found its chalky excreta 
splashed on the steps, and once I found a pellet containing the skull of a Sparrow. 
In the spring of 1885, I found that it frequented Ay lest one Church. In conversa- 
tion with my friend the late Mr. Widdowson, some year or so before his lamented 
death, he told me of an extraordinary parasite he constantly found, during the 
winter months, in the legs of this bird, and I asked him to send me the next 
specimen, which he did on 7th Jan., 1884, writing: — “If you take the skin off 
the legs, you will find what I take to be the nidus of some insect, and I believe 
you would find the same in one-half the number killed at this season of the year, 
but at no other time, and in no other species.” On examination, I found, on the 
tibia just above the joint, under the skin, in the subcutaneous tissues, a collection 
of minute seed-like objects, which, under the 1-inch objective, resolved themselves 
into thousands of whitish-yellow acari. Under a higher power, I made out their 
possession of eight semi-spinous jointed legs, around an oval, sub-hyaline body, 
but I could not (even under the Fi^^h, our highest power) make out anything 
else but one or two short transverse lines and a slit nearly in the centre of the 
body. From the drawing I made of one of them, I infer their relation to the 
itch insect. 
It is recorded in the ‘Zoologist,’ 1869, p. 1724, that a young tame Owl, 
about which a most entertaining account is given, flew away one evening when 
taken into the garden, and was not recovered until three days after, at seven 
o’clock in the morning, when he came to the bedroom window, and knocked and 
flapped against the glass for admittance, and was caught, but that how he found 
