( 283 ) 

 THE DUTCH AND BRITISH LITTLE OWLS. 



BY 



H. F. WITHERBY. 



In working out the plumages of the Little Owl for the 

 Practical Handbook, I was very surprised to find that examples 

 from England, of which I have examined over fifty, were 

 much darker on the upper-parts than those from middle 

 Europe. 



As our Little Owls are descendants of birds introduced 

 from Holland by Lord Lilford in Northamptonshire and Mr. 

 E. G. B. Meade-Waldo in Kent, it was necessary to examine 

 Dutch specimens. Unfortunately there are none in Lord 

 Rothschild's collection at Tring and only one in the British 

 Museum, but Mr. P. Hens has very kindly lent me a series 

 of eight from Nord-Holland, Utrecht and Limburg. These 

 and British examples, as well as one which I obtained in 

 Flanders, and also one from near Hamburg, in the Tring 

 Museum, are easily separable from a series of the considerably 

 paler brown birds from Germany, Hungar}', Switzerland 

 and Italy, while one from Paris and another from Lyons are 

 like the latter. As the typical locality of Scopoli's Strix noctua 

 is Carniola, I propose to separate as a local race the Little 

 Owl from Holland, Flanders (apparently Hanover and pro- 

 bably Belgium and parts of Rhineland, from which countries 

 I have not seen specimens) and the introduced British bird 

 as follows : — • 



Athene noctua mira subsp. nov. 

 Upper-parts dark umber considerably darker and less rufous- 

 brown than in A. n. noctua and even darker as a rule than in 

 A. n. vidalii (Spain), white streaks on crown usually as white 

 as in ^. n. vidalii but not so narrow and more drop-shaped. 

 Brown streaks on under-parts darker but ground-colour 

 inclined to be whiter than in ^. n. noctua. ^ wing 152-165 

 (20 measured) $ wing 156-165 (20 measured). 



Type 9 ad. Houthem, Limburg, Holland, November 20th. 

 1919, in my own collection. Collected by Mr. P. Hens. 



Note. — There appears to be no difference in measurements 

 between A. n. mira and A. n. noctua. 



