and Mr. Jago informs me the Barn Owls have taken possession of a
pigeon-hole in a house in the Brock Road opposite his, and that he sees
and hears them every night. Some years ago he told me he shot one near
the Queen's Tower. He was not scared like the man who shot one in the
churchyard, and thought he had shot a cherubim, but he had to give up
shooting owls, as the owner of the pigeon-hole where the owls have taken
up their abode remonstrated with him, and he has since refrained, though
he has had several chances. The vacancy caused by the one being shot was
soon filled up.

The Barn Owl is mentioned in Professor Ansted's list, and restricted to
Guernsey and Sark. There are two specimens in the Museum, both of which
are said to have been killed in Guernsey.


18. REDBACKED SHRIKE. _Lanius Collurio_, Linnaeus. French, "Pie-grieche
écorcheur."--The Red-backed Shrike may be considered a tolerably
regular, but not very common, summer visitant to the Channel Islands. In
June, 1876, I several times saw a male bird about the Vallon, in
Guernsey. The female no doubt had a nest at the time in the Vallon
grounds, but I could not then get in there to search for it.

As the Red-backed Shrike frequently returns to the same place every
year, I expected again to find this bird, and perhaps the female and the
nest this year, 1878, about the Vallon, but I could see nothing of
either birds or nest, though I searched both inside and outside the
Vallon grounds.

Young Mr. Le Cheminant, who lives at Le Ree and has a small collection
of Guernsey eggs mostly collected by himself in the Island, had one