no. 3640 HAWAIIAN BIRDS — CLAPP AND WOODWARD 31 



Horned puffins breed from northeastern Siberia and the Koman- 

 dorskie Islands east to the islands of the Bering Sea, the Aleutians, 

 and the Alaska Peninsula. They winter in the breeding range and 

 south to Oregon and have been recorded in Japan and California 

 (AOU, 1957). 



Short-eared Owl Asio flammeus (flammeus?) 



A short-eared owl (or owls) was recorded frequently on Green 

 Island, Kure Atoll, during POBSP studies there. One was seen in the 

 months of October and November 1963, Febraury, March, and De- 

 cember 1964, and January, February, and March 1965. Two owls 

 were seen on Dec. 24, 1964. 



An injured bird (USNM 494362), the first specimen from Kure 

 Atoll, was collected by Fleet on Feb. 12, 1964. One might expect that 

 this owl had wandered to Kure from the endemic population (A/. 

 sandwichensis) in the main Hawaiian Islands or possibly from the 

 population (A /. ponapensis) in the Caroline Islands. 



Both these insular populations are smaller than the Holarctic form, 

 A j. flammeus. Wing measurements of two A j. ponapensis given by 

 Mayr (1945) are 295 and 307 mm, and wing measurements of two 

 additional specimens from the Caroline Islands in the U.S. National 

 Museum are 286 and 278 mm. Wings of six specimens of A. j. sand- 

 wichensis in the U.S. National Museum, four reported by Bryan 

 (1901), and two recorded in the "Catalogue of Birds in the British 

 Museum" (Sharpe, 1875) range from 282 to 305 mm and average 

 295 mm. 



The wing of the present specimen, however, measures 315 mm and 

 agrees well with the range and mean (300-326 mm, 312 mm) given 

 by Ridgway (1914) for 16 females of the typical race, A. j. flammeus. 



The tail measurement of the Kure bird (151 mm) also agrees better 

 with measurements of A. f. flammeus than it does with A.j. sand- 

 wichensis. Eidgway (1914) gives a range and mean for 16 female 

 A.j. flammeus as 142-158.5 mm and 152 mm. The range and mean of 

 12 A. j. sandwichensis (those referred to above) is 134-158 mm and 

 142 mm. On the basis of these measurements we tentatively assign 

 the present specimen to the form A. j. flammeus. 



Short-eared owls have been reported present on Kure by two other 

 observers. Fisher (1965) visited Kure in December 1963 and saw an 

 owl at that time. Robbins (1966) saw two of these owls on Kure in 

 the period Feb. 2-4, 1962, and believed that they might be breeding 

 there. POBSP observers, however, have made no observations that 

 would support this conjecture. 



The form A. j. flammeus breeds in the Old World from Iceland east 

 to Sakhalin and breeds in North America from northern Alaska east 



