BUBONIN^. 129 



under tail-coverts faintly cross-barred with light brown ; disk 

 whitish ; eyebrows black ; ruff dark blackish, edged fulvous. 



Length, 22 inches; wing, 16; tail, 9; tarsus, nearly 3; mid-toe 

 and claw, 2| ; bill, not 2 ; height, 1 . The wings reach to the end 

 of the tail ; the tertials are only two inches shorter ; the inner claw 

 is about equal to the middle one. 



This species is exceedingly similar to B. ascalaphus of North- 

 East Africa, an accidental visitant to Europe ; and it has lately been 

 asserted that it is perhaps identical with that species, but Kaup, 

 Bonaparte, and others, keep it distinct. 



The Eock Horned Owl is found throughout India and Ceylon, 

 extending into Affghanistan. It prefers rocky hills, and ravines 

 in open country, and is rare on the Malabar coast, and in Lower 

 Bengal below the tideway. It is often found in holes in the trap 

 hills of the Deccan and other parts ; hence the name given by 

 Hodgson : also not unfrequently in old buildings, fort walls, &c. 

 I have killed it on the Neilgherries in dense woods, but it is 

 not so common there as the bare-legged horned Owls. There is 

 not a rocky hill in the Carnatic, nor a ravine in the Deccan, where 

 this Owl may not be seen seated on the summit of a rock, or a 

 ledge, till long after sunrise, and looming large against the clear sky, 

 looking more like a quadruped than a bird. Kiver banks, when 

 partially clad with brushwood, are also favorite haunts. It hunts 

 of course chiefly at night, and destroys large quantities of rats, 

 also, occasionally, birds, lizards, snakes, crabs, and large insects. 

 Where rocky or broken ground does not occur, it betakes itself to 

 dense groves and gardens. 



I have found its nest on a well-shaded ledge on the south side 

 of a ravine, where the light of the sun could not penetrate at that 

 season, viz., March. It lays two or three white eggs. Hodgson 

 says always two, and that it breeds in a hole or burrow, on a bank- 

 side. The cry of this Owl is a loud solemn hoot, likened, by 

 a writer in the India Sporting Heview for 1842, to durgoon, 

 durgoon. 



The same writer says that it bites off the head of large birds, 

 and eats them gradually from the neck to the tail ; small birds it 

 eats whole, first biting the tail-feathers off. I had a pair of this 



R 



