DISTRIBUTION OF BARN-OWLS. 19 



StRIX CANDIDA. 



Mr. Blyth gives, as the habitat of this species in the Indian peninsula : — 

 " Plains of India : very rare in the mud-soil of Lower Bengal, within reach 

 of the tide" (Cat. B. Mus. A. S. B. p. 42). 



Dr. Jerdon wTites as follows (B. Ind. i. p. 118) :— " The Grass-Owl is 

 found throughout the greater part of India, but thinly scattered and by no 

 means plentiful. I first procured it on the grassy side of a hill on the 

 Neilgherries, at about 6000 feet of elevation. I afterwards obtained it in the 

 Carnatic and in Central India ; and it was procured by Tickell in the same 

 district, and probably occurs also in the N.W. Provinces; for Mr. Philipps, 

 under the name of Strix javanica, mentions its living in long grass, and to be 

 found in abundance some miles from Hodal. Tickell, too, mentions its being 

 found throughout Bengal and the Upper Provinces.'' [Mr. Philipps's bird is 

 supposed, and with reason, to have been Asio accipitrinus,'] A specimen from 

 Madras is in the Leiden Museum. 



Colonel Tickell was the first to describe this species from the jungles of 

 Borabhum and Dholbhum. He says it frequents the long grass jungle, and 

 passes its life almost entirely on the ground, seldom perching even on the 

 lowest tree (J. A. S. B. ii. p. 572). On the faith of this, Mr. Ball includes it in 

 his Chota-Nagpur list, but does not appear to have seen it himself (S, F. 1874, 

 p. 381). Captain Beavan says: — ^^I myself have observed this species only 

 once. When hunting for leopards in the district of Rungpore, in 1859, several 

 were put up out of grass at the bottom of a half-dried-up piece of water, in 

 thick jungle '' (P. Z. S. 1868, p. 400). Mr. Hume records two instances of the 

 breeding of this Owl in Tirhoot, near Shapur, in October 1866, on the authority 

 of Mr. C. H. Parker (Nests & Eggs Ind. B. p. 60). Colonel Irby obtained 

 specimens in the open country of Oudh and Kumaon (Ibis, 1861, p. 227). 

 Mr. Blyth writes (Ibis, 1866, p. 261) : — " I never obtained this bird in Lower 

 Bengal ; but I remember that the late Prof. Wallich had a coloured drawing 

 of one that, as I understood from him, had been killed in the Calcutta Botanic 

 Garden." Major Godwin-Austen, in his list of the birds of the Khasia Hills^ 



