Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/115

 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 the 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?] 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.