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194 BRITISH BIRDS. 
varieties occur, somewhat smaller in size, and having more rounded wings, 
the first primary being shorter than the seventh, and the second primary 
much shorter than the fifth. (In the European and North-west Himalayan 
birds the first primary is considerably longer than the seventh, and the 
second primary much longer than the fifth.) Similar small varieties 
with rounded wings also occur in China, Japan, and the valley of the 
Amoor. 
The Scops Owl is a nocturnal bird, its note being more often heard 
during the night than during the day. Its food is procured principally 
during the evening; and in the daytime it is very seldom seen on the 
wing. That it is not exclusively nocturnal in its habits is proved by the 
observations of Dresser, who states that he not unfrequently saw it in 
Spain flying about during the brightest portion of a hot summer's day. 
Heuglin, in describing its habits on the Nile, where it is only a winter 
visitant, also says that it is frequently seen during the daytime, frequenting 
not only copses, but occasionally isolated bushes where there is scarcely 
any shade. During the day it is seldom seen far from the trees where it 
roosts ; but in the evening it frequents the open ground, feeding upon 
grasshoppers, beetles, cockchafers, and large moths, and occasionally 
catching a mouse or a shrew. Naumann says that it also picks up small 
birds and frogs, and on clear nights hunts till dawn. The Scops Owl not 
only frequents the country, but also comes into the gardens and avenues 
of trees in many southern cities. Irby mentions that their monotonous 
single note may be heard repeatedly by day as well as by night, even 
in the trees which fringe the Delicias, the Rotten Row of Seville. 
In Greece and Asia Minor I found it a not uncommon bird, but one 
which was very rarely seen. The Little Owl was often seen in the day- 
time; but the present species seemed more especially to be a nocturnal 
bird. I never once met with it on the wing, but have often listened to 
its monotonous note, as monotonous as a passing bell, and almost as 
melancholy. ‘To my ears this note is exactly represented by the sound of 
the syllable ahp repeated in an unvarying and desponding tone every ten 
or twenty seconds. This bird is generally, if sparingly, distributed all 
over Greece, from the seashore almost, if not quite, up to the pine-regions 
on the mountains. I have often listened to its note as I lay in my camp- _ 
bed in a peasant’s cottage at Agoriane, halfway up the Parnassus, when it — 
was almost too cold to sleep with comfort ; and I have heard it from the 
hotel at Buyukdere, on the Bosphorus, when, with window wide open, the 
heat made it still more difficult to pass the night in happy unconsciousness 
even of ornithological sounds. 
In the extreme south of Europe a few Scops Owls are to be seen during 
the winter ; but by far the greatest number are migrants, arriving early 
in April and leaving again in October. Immediately after its arrival the 
