148 BllITISH BIRDS. 



ALUCO FLAMMEUS. 

 BARN-OWL. 



(PLATE 7.) 



Strix aluco, Briss. Orn. i. p. 503 (1760) ; Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 132 (1766). 



Strix flammea, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 133 (1766) ; et auctorum plurimorum 



Temminck, Naumann, Gould, Macgillivray, Bonaparte, Sharpe, (Newton), &c. 

 Aluco albus, Gerini, Orn. Meth. Dig. i. p. 89, pi. Ixxxxii. (1767). 

 Strix alba, Scop. Ann. I. Hist. Nat. p. 21 (1769). 

 Aluco flammeus (Linn.}, Flem. Brit. An. p. 57 (1828). 

 Strix guttata, Brehm, Vb'g. Deutschl. p. 106 (1831). 

 Eustrinx flammea (Linn.), Webb fy Berth. Orn. Canar. p. 8 (1841). 

 Strix poensis, Fraser, P. Z. S. 1842, p. 189. 



Stridula flammea (Linn.), Selys-Longch. Faune Beige, p. 60 (1842). 

 Strix insularis, Pelz. Journ. Orn. 1872, p. 23. 



The Barn-Owl is a common resident throughout the British Islands, 

 including the Hebrides, and appears only recently to have become extinct 

 in the Orkneys. 



It is by no means the cosmopolitan bird that it has been represented to 

 be. It is, in point of fact, a tropical bird, found throughout the equatorial 

 region of both hemispheres, and not ranging more than forty degrees north 

 or south of the equator, except in Western Europe, where the influence of the 

 Gulf-stream has produced a climate mild enough to allow of its wintering 

 there. It is very rare in South Sweden, and is found nowhere else in the 

 Scandinavian peninsula. It is rare in Western Russia, but is otherwise 

 absent from Russia, Eastern Turkey, Greece, Asia Minor, Persia, Siberia, 

 Mongolia, and China. There appear to be seven colonies of Barn-Owls. 

 The first comprises Western Europe south of the Baltic, and Western Africa 

 from Algiers to the Gold Coast, including the Azores, Madeiras, Canaries, 

 and Cape-Verd Islands ; the second South Africa and Madagascar ; the 

 third the valley of the Nile and Palestine; the fourth the whole of India, 

 extending to the north-west into Turkestan, and to the east into Burma ; 

 the fifth Java, Lombock, and Celebes ; the sixth Eastern Australia and 

 some of the Pacific Islands ; the seventh North and South America from 

 lat. 40 north to lat. 40 south, including the West Indies. In this latter 

 colony alone Ridgway recognizes four subspecies. Barn-Owls from the 

 other five colonies appear to be all subspecifically distinct from those of 

 the first colony, though possibly not in every case from each other. In 

 the West-European and West-African colony there are three forms a 

 pale eastern form, a dark western form, and a rufous southern form, with 

 every possible intermediate form, and considerable irregularity in their dis- 

 tribution, all three forms, for example, having been found in the British 



