STRIGID.t. 



THE HAWK-OWL. 



SuRNiA FUNEREA (Liiinjeus). 



An example of this rare wanderer to Great Britain was taken in an 

 exhausted state off the coast of Cornwall in March 1830 : a second 

 was shot near Yatton, in Somersetshire, while hawking for prey on a 

 sunny afternoon in August 1847 ; a third on Unst, in the Shetland 

 Islands, in the winter of 1860-61 ; a fourth near Glasgow in December 

 1863 ; and a fifth near Greenock in November 1868. Those of the 

 above now available for critical examination belong to the North 

 American form — distinguished by trinomialists in the United States 

 as S. uliila caparoch — in which the dark transverse bands of the 

 under parts are more ruddy than in the European, while the white 

 on the upper parts is rather more pronounced ; and there can be 

 little doubt that these birds had received aid from vessels bound for 

 Bristol or the Clyde. An example of the European form was, 

 however, obtained near Amesbury, Wilts, and identified by Dr. R. B. 

 Sharpe (P. Z. S., 1876, p. 334) ; while the Shetland bird (destroyed 

 by moth) was also, judging by the description, from the Old World. 



The Hawk-Owl does not migrate to any extent, and neither of the 



B B 



