420 Fleming, The Saiv-whet Owls. [oct. 



THE SAW-WHET OWL OF THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE 



ISLANDS. 



BY J. H. FLEMING. 



Lying off the coast of British Columbia to the south of the 

 Alaska boundary, the Queen Charlotte Islands have been investi- 

 gated by naturalists in recent years, but seemingly without exhaust- 

 ing the possibilities of the interesting fauna. When Mr. Wilfred H. 

 Osgood published in 1901, his account of the fauna of these islands, 

 he described a Saw-whet Owl as Nyctala acadica scotcEci,^ basing 

 the name on a single specimen collected in 1896, by the Rev. J. H. 

 Keen, at Masset on Graham Island. ^ The differences noted 

 between this form and true acadica were slight, but Mr. Osgood 

 concluded that the birds of the humid Pacific coast region belonged 

 to his new form and called it the North-west Saw-whet Owl, it was 

 admitted to the 'A. O. U. Check-List,' with the range as "Puget 

 Sound region, north to the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Colum- 

 bia." ^ Thus the matter remained till 1914, when Mr. Ridgway 

 in part six of ' The Birds of Middle and North America,' page 629, 

 refused to recognize scotoea, and referred all the Saw-whets of North 

 America to acadica, giving his reasons as follows. "The only 

 peculiarities that I am able to observe in the type of Nyctala acadica 

 scotoea consist in the deep ochreous buff aiu"icular region and more 

 reddish brown of the pileum; but I am of the opinion that these 

 characters will not pro\'e constant when more specimens from the 

 Queen Charlotte Islands have been examined." 



With these facts in mi^d I was surprised when Mr. J. A. Munro of 

 Okanagan Landing, B. C, sent me word that he had four Saw-whet 

 Owls from Graham Island that differed from any he had previously 

 seen in British Columbia, these birds are now before me together 

 with Osgood's type of scotcea, this type, and a Mexican skin have 

 been lent to me by the Biological Survey through Mr. E. W. Nelson ; 

 besides these, the V. S. National Museum through Dr. C. W. 



1 North American Fauna, 21, p. 43. 



2 Type, c? ad. Biological Survey, No. 168171. 

 8 Auk, 1902, p. 319. 



