or dense plantations, this bird frequents wide open fields,
extensive commons, heaths, and moors. A large proportion
of the specimens seen in this country are winter visitors that
come from the North of Europe with the first favourable
wind in October, and have in consequence been called Woodcock
Owls. There are few sportsmen who have not occasionally
met with this Owl when Partridge shooting, towards
the end of October, either in old grass fields, barley stubbles,
or turnips. It lies close, and when obliged to move flies
only a short distance, and is very easily obtained. In winter,
when the fields are bare, it shelters itself in the bottoms of
thick hedge-rows. From its small head and its habit of
looking for food during the day, Pallas called this species
S trix accipitrina, and Hawk Owl is also a common name
for it in this country. Many of those that visit great Britain
in the autumn and winter months, retire northward again
in the following spring; but some few remain and breed, not
only in the Orkneys, in Scotland, and in some of the northern
counties of England, but even much farther south than has
hitherto been apprehended.
Mr. Low says it breeds frequently in the island of Hoy,
one of the Orkneys, forming an artless nest among the heath.
Two young birds, nearly ready to fly, had been supplied by
the parent birds with a Moorfowl and two Plovers. Sir
William Jardine, in a note to the Short-eared Owl in his
edition of Wilson’s American Ornithology, vol. ii. page 63,
considers that many are bred on the Scottish moors. In one
locality'in Dumfriesshire, Sir William found two nests with
five eggs. “ They were formed upon the ground among the
heath ; the bottom of the nest scraped until the fresh earth
appeared, on which the eggs were placed, without any lining,
or other accessory covering. When approaching the nest or
young, the old birds fly and hover round, uttering a shrill
cry, and snapping with their bills. They will then alight at
a short distance, survey the aggressor, and again resume their
flight and cries. The young are barely able to fly by the
12th of August, and appear to leave the nest some time
before they are able to rise from the ground. I have taken
them, on that great day to sportsmen, squatted on the heath
like young black game, at no great distance from each other,
and always attended by the parent birds. Last year (1831)
I found them in their old haunts, to which they appear to
return very regularly; and the female, with a young bird,
was procured. The young could only fly for sixty or seventy
yards.”
Mr. Selby, from finding old birds during summer and on
the 12th of August, at which time they were moulting, believes
that a few pairs breed on the higher moors of Northumberland,
and probably also some on those of Westmoreland
and Cumberland. Mr. Hoy, in the Magazine of Natural
History, says, “ I am acquainted with two localities
in the south-western part of Norfolk, where pairs of this bird
breed; and I have known several instances of their eggs and
young being found. One situation is on a dry heathy soil,
the nest placed on the ground amongst high heath; the
other in low fenny ground, among sedge and rushes: a friend
of mine procured some eggs from the latter situation during
the last summer (1832). The Short-eared Owl is pretty
common in many parts of Norfolk during the autumn and
winter, the great majority of them retiring northwards in the
spring, only leaving a few scattered pairs to breed in this
district.”
The Short-eared Owl is also very likely to be the Horned
Owl referred to by Mr. Jesse in his most agreeable Gleanings,
the eggs of which have been found in a rabbit burrow
in Suffolk, and, the writer adds, “ I have found such Owls on
the Brighton downs, near a rabbit-warren, without a tree or a
shrub near them, squatting on the ground like a hare in her
form.”