Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/123

 from a nest in the vicinity of the Moravian settlement, on the coast of Labrador. He had commissioned a person to procure for him there, living specimens of the gyr falcon, for which the owls were mistaken. In the preceding year, peregrine falcons were brought to him thence by mistake for gyr falcons. The white colour of the owls, however, led the person commissioned to procure the hawks, to believe that he had at last obtained the wished-for objects. These nestlings were at the time covered only with down, and were so young that it was at first feared they would not survive until the arrival of the vessel in London. Due care was, however, taken of them, upwards of 700 mice, procured by an Esquimaux for the occasion, were stowed in the vessel for their support; when these were consumed, reindeers' flesh was given them ; and when the vessel came near soundings, they were supplied with sea-gulls caught upon baited hooks. An examina- tion of these individuals has enabled me to correct an error which appears in some of the best ornithological works respecting the plumage of the snowy owl in the first year. This error seems, in part at least, to have originated with Bullock, who states (but not from personal observation), that the young birds which are seen in the Shetland Islands flying about with their parents, are brown at the end of summer. Temminck also remarks, that " les jeunes, au sortir du nid, sont couverts d'un duvet brim ; les premieres plumes sont aussi d'un brun clair."* Audubon ob- serves, " I have shot specimens, which were, as I thought, so young as to be nearly of a uniform light-brown tint, and which puzzled me for several years, as I had at first conceived them to be of a different species/'f On arrival, when they were in good condition, the birds under consideration were as follows : —

One, much smaller than the others, and presumed to be a male, was considerably whiter than the specimen shot in a wild state, whose plumage has just been described, but displayed two markings which the other does not possess ; the back of the head, where it joins the body, being blackish-brown, and another patch of this colour appear-

Man. Orn. torn. i. p. 82.

f Orn. Biog. vol. ii. p. 136 ; where a highly interesting account of the snowy owl's mode of fishing, as witnessed by the author at the Falls of the Ohio, will be found.