SCOPS EARED OWL. 



is found in Asia. It does not visit the North of Europe 

 even in summer, but is found at that season in the 

 southern part of Germany. In France it is not uncommon, 

 and is said to appear and depart with the Swallow. Ad- 

 vancing southward to the shores and islands of the Me- 

 diterranean, it is even plentiful ; and Mr. W. Spence, the 

 well-known Entomologist, has thus recorded its summer 

 habits : 



" This Owl, which in summer is very common in Italy, 

 is remarkable for the constancy and regularity with which 

 it utters its peculiar note or cry. It does not merely ' to 

 the moon complain' occasionally, but keeps repeating its 

 plaintive and monotonous cry of ' kew, keivj (whence its 

 Florentine name of Chiti, pronounced almost exactly like 

 the English letter Q,) in the regular intervals of about two 

 seconds, the livelong night ; and until one is used to it, 

 nothing can well be more wearisome. Towards the end 

 of April last year, 1830, one of these Owls established 

 itself in the large Jardin Anglais, behind the house where 

 we resided at Florence ; and, until our departure for 

 Switzerland in the beginning of June, I recollect but one 

 or two instances in which it was not constantly to be 

 heard, as if in spite to the Nightingales which abounded 

 there, from nightfall to midnight (and probably much 

 later), whenever I chanced to be in the back part of the 

 house, or took our friends to listen to it, and always with 

 precisely the same unwearied cry, and the intervals be- 

 tween each as regular as the ticking of a pendulum. This 

 species of Owl, according to Professor Savi's excellent 

 Omithologia Toscana, vol. i. p. 74, is the only Italian 

 species which migrates ; passing the winter in Africa and 

 southern Asia, and the summer in the south of Europe. 

 It feeds wholly upon beetles, grasshoppers, and other 

 insects." 



VOL. i. K 



