2606 The Zoologist— May, 1871. 



From a study of the foregoing list, the winter will be remembered by the 

 number of swans, geese and scaup ducks which visited the mud-flats about 

 Leigh, to the exclusion of the other species of fowl ; wigeon, more especially, 

 having been almost totally absent. — A. H. Smee; April 3, 1871. 



Note on the alleged Identity of the American Bed Owl with the 

 Mottled Owl. — I cannot help thinking that in my correspondence with 

 brother-ornithologists on the subject of the supposed American owl seen iu 

 Kent, we were talking of two ditfereut birds the whole time. It is useless 

 for me to try and prove that my bird was as small as a scops, for it certainly 

 was not. Now Captain Hadlield says the mottled owl is very little, if at aU, 

 larger than the scops ; Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Hobson (in the ' Naturahst ' 

 some years ago) inform us that in two several instances a mottled owl has been 

 mistaken for a scops. Now the length of the scops eared owl is well known 

 to be about seven or seven and a half inches. Sui^posing the mottled owl 

 to be only about this size, and to be identical with the red owl, the American 

 little owl, &c., of American authors, how do you account for the following 

 statements? Liuueus, Pennant, and I think Shaw, agree in separating 

 the red and mottled owls, and tell us that the former is ten inches and a 

 half, the latter eleven inches long ! Catesby does not mention any mottled 

 owl, but tells us that the little owl of CaroUua, which exactly answers to 

 the red owl and to my bird, is of the size of a jackdaw ! Now these authors 

 ai-e generally very trustworthy in the measurements they give, and Catesby, 

 it should be observed, was describing the common every -day birds of Carolina, 

 omitting the rarer and less-kuowu species. Assuming, therefore, the length 

 of my bird when dead and stretched out to be eleven inches, I might, 

 without any great absurdity, have guessed its apparent height as it sat to 

 be eight or nine inches — ^a calculation in which I very likely left out the 

 tail, which would be below its perch. Audubon gives us a coloured plate in 

 support of his theory that the mottled and red owls are identical, but makes 

 the red bird quite a dillerent shape from the gray, the red one being a stout 

 thickish bird in comparison with the other, which is more slender, like a 

 scops. In short, I beheve he has figured two different birds, and I believe 

 my bird to be identical with Catesby 's little owl, rather than with, the 

 mottled owl of modern authors. The bird I saw must have been very nearly 

 a third shorter than the lougeared owl, judging by stuffed specimens, and, 

 judging by the accounts of authors, a third larger than the scops. I should 

 say it bad shorter and rounder wings in proportion than Strix otus. 

 I hope some ornithologist will tell me what he thinks about Catesby 's httle 

 red owl, " the size of a jackdaw."— C^//io?t ; Cobham Hall, Kent, March Si9, 

 1871. 



longeared Owl.— March 20. Took six eggs (rather hard sat on) of 

 the lougeared owl from a deserted nest of a carrion crow. To take six 

 eggs is both lucky and very unusual, as most authors state that from two 



