342 ON THE PLUMAGE AND HABITS OF 



By W. Vincent Legge, Esq., R.A. 



Mr. Hume's note on this Owl, contained in No. 6, Vol. I., 

 Stray Feathers, induces me to put into execution what I have 

 several times thought of doing through the medium of this 

 journal, viz., placing on record some account of the plumage, 

 immature and adult, and habits in confinement of Ceylon 

 examples of the species. 



The Wood Owl inhabits the forest on the lower mountains of 

 the central and southern provinces of Ceylon, and the primeval 

 forests of the hilly country of the south and west of the island. 

 My specimens, which I reared in two consecutive years, were 

 brought to me from a spot within a few miles of Point de Gralle, 

 and came, I bave no doubt, of the same parents. The bird 

 affects, as a rule, damp forests with lofty trees, but resorts for 

 roosting and shelter to the scrubby undergrowth, from which 

 I have flushed it on one or two occasions. They nidificate, the 

 natives inform me, in holes in trees ; my examples were taken 

 from the trunk of a lofty Horra, Dipterocarpus zeylanicus, 

 the rotten wood in the cavity which the old birds had selected, 

 forming the nest. Just a word before speaking of my pets 

 (now alas no more ! killed by a fellow-tenant of the aviary, a 

 noble, but fierce and tyrannical Limnaetus cristatellus) about 

 the supposed diabolical screams of the species. These, as far 

 as I am aware, were first noticed in the Magazine and Annals 

 of Natural History for 1853, by Edgar Layard, and his ideas, 

 formed entirely from native information (sometimes the most 

 erroneous, as we all know) have been propagated by subse- 

 quent ornithologists in Ceylon. It is my conviction, however, — 

 I may be in error, — that no European has ever yet received 

 occular testimony by shooting the bird in the act of making 

 these hideous notes, sufficient to enable him to affirm that 

 Syrnium indranee is the author of them. My own experience 

 in Ceylon is that natives at different times and in different 

 places have given me the most contradictory answers concerning 

 the delinquent ; some that it was a large bird, some that it was 

 a small one, and so forth, and whenever I have mooted the subject 

 among my sportsman friends, I have been met with the most con- 

 flicting testimony concerning it, one gentleman positively assert- 

 ing that he had seen and watched the bird in the act of making 

 its hideous sounds night after night, and that it was a white 

 one ! But the usual valuable testimony, shooting the bird 



