STRIC.m E.
Britain by the late Dr. Edmonston, who, early in the present
century, as he informed Macgillivray, found one hung up as
a scarecrow in the Shetland Islands.* He next saw one in
the isle of Unst, which a few days afterwards he sh o t; and,
in 1812, presented the skin to Bullock, with whom it
remained until the disposal hy sale, in 1819, of his collection.
I t was then bought for the British Museum, where it
now is. Bullock himself, in July, 1812, saw a bird of this
species, which he was unable to procure, in North Bonaldsey,
one of the Orkneys, and heard of it in Westrey and elsewhere,
and his account being communicated to Montagu,
was by that naturalist published, in 1818, in the Appendix
to his ‘ Ornithological Dictionary,’ with the additional information
that Bullock had about two years previously received
a specimen from Norwich, in which neighbourhood, he was
assured, it had been killed. I t has since been shown by
Thompson, in his ‘ Birds of Ireland,’ that in the autumn of
1812 there is good reason to believe that a Snowy Owl was
taken on the south coast of that island, and thus it would
seem that the species was recognized as a visitor to all three
kingdoms almost simultaneously. But at that time Montagu
and others believed that the Snowy Owl bred on the
islands of Unst and Yell, though Edmonston appears always
to have doubted the story; and, since this species had
received a Shetland name, “ Katyogle,” which has been also
applied to the Short-eared Owl, a mistake seems at any rate
possible. I t is nowadays allowed on all sides that the
Snowy Owl does not breed at liberty in any part of Britain,
though it has occurred in every month of the year.
This species has been observed so frequently in the British
Islands that an enumeration of the different instances is
unnecessary. In some one or other of the Shetlands and
Orkneys it appears almost every year, and, according to Mr.
Saxby, usually after a northerly wind. On the mainland of
* Macgillivray says this happened in 1808, but Edmonston, in his paper in the
‘Memoirs of the Wernerian Society’ (vol. iv. p. 157) says, “ I fell in with this
species first in Zetland in 1811, and in the following spring I shot an adult male,
which I shortly after presented to Mr. Bullock.”
SNOWY OWL. 189
Scotland it has been obtained once or oftener in most of
the Highland counties and those bordering the Firth of
Clyde. The same is the case in the islands of Mull, Iona
and Skye ; while in the Outer Hebrides it may be regarded,
says Mr. Robert Gray, as an almost regular spring visitant.
In England it has occurred at least thrice in Northumberland,
once in Yorkshire, seven or eight times in Norfolk,
once in Suffolk and once in Devonshire. In Ireland the
recorded occurrences are not much less numerous, and
beside the example before mentioned, which seems to have
been noticed in the county Wexford in 1812, others have
been observed in Cork, Tipperary, Longford, Mayo—where
several specimens have been obtained, Donegal, Tyrone,
Antrim, Armagh and Down.
The Snowy Owl is a truly Arctic bird, inhabiting the more
northern parts of both hemispheres, not usually haunting the
woodlands, as does the last species; but frequenting the open
and mountainous districts. I t has several times occurred
in the Fieroes ; but visits Iceland and Spitsbergen only as a
straggler, though observed by Mr. Gillett to be very common
along the coast of Nova Zembla. I t is a bird very well
known to the Laplanders, and, regulating its movements by
those of the lemmings, occasionally follows those destructive
little rodents along the mountain ranges to lower latitudes,
generally keeping, however, above the limit at which trees
grow on the fells. I t is thus often found to breed abundantly
in a district wherein for many years before it had
only been known as a straggler. The nest consists of a
little moss or lichen and a few feathers, generally placed on
a ledge of rock, where there is a slight hollow ; but at times
the eggs lie on the bare ground. They are from six to
eight or even more in number, white, and measure from
2*44 to 2*1 in. by from 1*84 to 1*68 in. According to
information supplied by a correspondent in Labrador to Mr.
Hubert Hawkins (Ibis, 1870, p. 298) they “ are not all
laid and brooded at one time, but the first two are often
batched by the time the last is laid, so that you may find
in one nest young birds and fresh eggs, and others more or
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