90 
STRIGIDiE. 
very rarely about Clonmel,* Major Walker of Belmont, near 
Wexford, mentions their presence in winter in numbers on the 
mountain of Forth, whence they leave the country about April. 
This gentleman remarks 1 “ I consider the short-eared owl and 
the yellow owl [S. flammed ? ] the most sharp-sighted and vigilant 
birds I meet, and nearly impossible to get a shot at after being 
once disturbed, perching as they do on some elevation, or in the 
centre of a field, so as to command a good view around. I men- 
tion this, as it is so different from the habits of the very large 
owls I have met with in the forests of North America, which 
would let our troops ride within a few yards of their perch, and 
unless struck at, never flew away.” Another correspondent, 
writing from the same county, mentions his coming suddenly on 
three of these birds, resting together on the ground in the middle 
of a large bog, waiting as he supposed, “for an opportunity of 
devouring snipe.” Specimens are occasionally obtained in the 
county of Waterford.t 
In the Fauna of Cork, the species is noted as not rare ; and from 
what Dr. Harvey of Cork writes to me respecting its occurrence 
in that neighbourhood, it would seem to be about equally common 
as around Belfast. Mr. Neligan has remarked, that it arrives in 
Kerry with the woodcock, and departs thence at the same period ; 
also, that the haunts of the two species in the mountains are simi- 
lar. In the month of September or October, — about the time of 
arrival, — a friend of his once saw thirteen or fourteen in company; 
and from sportsmen shooting near Tralee, he was occasionally 
supplied with two or three of these birds in the course of a week. 
Mr. M'Calla, writing from Roundstone, Connemara, in October, 
1840, stated that he had seen but one owl of any kind in that 
district, and from the distance at which it was, the species could 
not be ascertained. To the short-eared owl only would that 
locality seem to be suited, and to it, particularly well. 
In the stomach of one specimen examined by me, were the legs of 
a dunlin ( Tringa variabilis), and in another, the remains of mice 4 
* Davis. f Burkitt. 
\ The following quaint extract from Rutty’s Natural History of the county of 
