SCOPS 487 



sides of the neck a band of blackish feathers ; under parts greyish white, 

 vermi ciliated with brown, sparingly blotched and striped with blackish 

 brown ; beak black, claws whitish at the base, blackish towards the tip ; 

 iris yellow. Culrneii 0'7, wing 5'7, tail 2*75, tarsus I/O inch. The female 

 differs only in being rather larger, and the young in being more rufous in ' 

 colour. 



Hccb. Central and Southern Europe, rarer in the northern 

 parts of the continent, of occasional occurrence in Great 

 Britain ; North Africa, ranging south to Abyssinia, Sennaar, 

 and Senegambia in the winter ; in Asia as far east as Persia 

 and Turkestan. 



Frequents groves and woods where there is abundant under- 

 growth, and is especially nocturnal in its habits. It feeds 

 chiefly, if not entirely, on insects of various kinds. Its note 

 which is uttered constantly at short intervals during the night 

 is a clear monotonous he-ou. 



It breeds in holes in trees, or occasionally in deserted nests, 

 seldom in holes in rocks or walls, its nest being a scanty bed 

 of moss or grass, and in May it deposits 4 to 5, seldom 6, pure 

 white roundish eggs, smooth in surface of shell, but not glossy, 

 which measure about 118 by I'Ol. 



In Europe this owl is not subject to much or scarcely any 

 variation in plumage except that a rufous form is occasionally 

 met with, but in Asia there are several races, so closely allied 

 that they scarcely constitute subspecies, viz., Scops sunw, 

 Hodgson, from China and Nepal, which is a rufous form much 

 redder than any rufous variety of S. giu from Europe ; Scops 

 pcnnatus, Blyth, from the Himalayas which is darker than the 

 European bird and has the ear-tufts rufous in part ; S. gym- 

 nopodus, Gray, appears to be merely a specimen which had acci- 

 dentally lost the feathers of the lower tarsus ; Scops malayanus, 

 Hay, from South China and the Malayan peninsula, is a dark 

 brownish form differing from S. pennatus as that form does from 

 the European S. giu ; and Scops r-ufipennis, Sharpe, from the 

 Carnatic, which differs very little from S. malayanus, and is a 

 small rather uniformly coloured race. 



692. SUBSP. SCOPS CYPRIUS. 

 Scops cypria, Madarasz. Termesz. Fiiset. 1901, p. 272. 



ad. (Cyprus). Differs from S. giu in being much darker in plumage 

 upper parts darker and greyer, the markings on the under parts thicke 

 and blacker. Culmen 0'75, wing 6'3, tail 278, tarsus I'l inch. 



