THE SHORT-EARED OWL. 
91 
As the dunlin is a shore bird, it may be remarked, that this owl 
is occasionally to be met with along the grassy margin of Belfast 
bay. 
Capt. Portlock, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 
(vol. i. p. 52), mentions, on information communicated to him by 
Serjeant Neely, collector for the Ordnance Survey, that these 
birds are regular autumnal visitants to the rabbit-warren at Magil- 
ligan, county of Londonderry, and have been seen at the entrance 
of the burrows, within which they retired when disturbed ; more 
than one was shot on emerging from the holes, and one was taken 
in a trap placed at the entrance of a burrow, when making its 
exit thence. As remarked by Captain Portlock, this habit brings 
to mind the burrowing owl of America, Strix cunicularia. By 
naming this species, the chord is touched which bears the imagi- 
nation to far distant regions, and is therefore extremely pleasing ; 
but there does not seem to me any analogy between the two cases. 
It is the general and natural habit of the American bird to live 
and breed within the burrows of the marmot, in the neighbour- 
hood of the Rocky mountains ; while we can only regard the S. 
brachyotus as a mere accidental tenant of the deserted dwelling of 
the rabbit in a particular locality. 
A serjeant, who had been attached to the Ordnance Survey, 
informed me, that he saw a white owl also fly into a rabbit-hole 
at Magilligan, and by means of a trap, the bird was captured 
when coming out. 
Dublin (1772), applies better to tbe short-eared, than to any other species of British 
owl : — “ Owls are useful about stacks of corn, to destroy the mice, and the more 
necessary, as these are great breeders. They were of singular use to the inhabitants 
of Kent, and marshes of Essex, A.D. 1581, when they had a sore plague of strange 
mice suddenly covering the earth, and gnawing the grass-roots, which poisoned all 
herbage, and raised the plague of murrain among cattle grazing on it ; no wit or art 
of man could destroy these mice, until another strange flight of owls came and killed 
them all.” 
A like observation is given us from Market-Downham, in the London Magazine, 
1754, where we are told that the parishioners pay almost the same veneration to the 
Norway owls, [_Strix brachyotus P] as the Egyptians did to the Ibis, and will not 
at any rate annoy them, on account of their coming to them and destroying the 
field-mice, with which they are infested commonly once about six or seven years, and 
which otherwise, like locusts, would devour their corn of every kind. Young owls 
are eaten in Norfolk, and it is a proverb among them, as tender as a boiled owl . 
