300 tengmalm's owl. 



forests of the various branches of the Carpathians and the Alps, 

 from Styria and the Tyrol westward, as well as in the A^osges, the 

 Jura, and the mountains of Dauphine ; while it has occurred on 

 both sides of the Pyrenees, though not further south in Spain. In 

 other parts of Europe it is chiefly a migrant. Eastward, it appears 

 to range through the forests of Siberia down to the Altai Mountains, 

 and eastward to Baikalia, and even to the Sea of Japan, though not 

 observed in Kamchatka ; while in Arctic America it is represented 

 by a slightly darker form, known to separatists as Nydala richardsoni . 



Our earliest knowledge of the breeding-habits of this, as of so 

 many other Arctic species, was derived from ^^'olley, who found that 

 in Lapland it occupied the tyllas or inis (nesting-boxes, formed of 

 logs hollowed out at either end, with a hole cut in the side) set up by 

 the inhabitants for the use of the Golden-eye Ducks ; it also deposits 

 its eggs in holes in trees, and often in some former abode of the 

 Black Woodpecker. The smooth white eggs, laid between the 

 beginning of May and the end of June, are 4-6, and exceptionally 

 10 in number: measurements 1*28 by i in. The food, which con- 

 sists of lemmings, mice and other rodents, with large beetles and 

 small birds, is generally procured during the latter half of the day ; 

 though sunshine does not incommode a bird which passes the 

 summer in the continuous light of the high north. The call-note is 

 a soft, long-drawn whistle. 



The adult male has the upper parts umber-brown, with small 

 white spots on the top of the head, large white patches on the back 

 and wing-coverts, and five lines of spots — forming bars — on the tail- 

 feathers ; facial disk nearly complete, dull white with a dark outer 

 ring ; under parts greyish-white, irregularly barred and streaked with 

 brown ; legs and toes thickly covered with whitish brown-speckled 

 feathers (in the Little Owl the feathers on the legs are short and the 

 toes have merely bristles) ; bill yellowish-white. Length 9 in. ; wing 

 6-5-7 in. The female is slightly larger than the male, but has the 

 white spots less pronounced ; the young are much darker than the 

 adults, and the spots are chiefly on the wings and tail. A charac- 

 teristic of this Owl, as shown by Prof. Collett of Christiania, is that 

 the ear-regions in the skull itself, as well as the orifices, are unequal 

 in size, and hence the skull is not symmetrical. 



The late Sir William M. E. Milner recorded (Zool. p. 7104) the 

 occurrence of the North American Saw-whet Owl, Nyctala acadica, 

 near Beverley in Yorkshire. He was probably mistaken or imposed 

 upon. 



