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brown and crossed by five indistinct whitish bands marbled with ashy brown ; facial disk greyish white 

 narrowly but very regularly barred with dark brown ; space round the inner and upper part of the eye 

 blackish ; margin of the disk chocolate-brown mottled with white, this latter colour most conspicuous 

 on the lower part ; chin blackish brown ; underparts dull white streaked with dark brown ; legs greyish 

 white narrowly barred with greyish brown; bill yellowish horn; iris light yellow. Total length about 

 27 inches, culmen 1*9, wing 18-0, tail 12-8, tarsus 2*55. 



Nestling (Sarai-Gor, Ob, 10th July, 1876). Upper parts very much darker than in the adult, dull (almost 

 sooty) chocolate-brown; the head covered with close dark feathers very slightly tipped with whitish 

 brown ; upper parts very little marked with white ; facial disk scarcely defined ; underparts sooty brown 

 closely barred with dull white ; wings and tail much darker than in the adult, the outer primaries only 

 indistinctly barred with dull greyish brown. 



This, one of the rarest of the Owls inhabiting the Pakearctic Region, is almost entirely confined 

 to the more boreal districts, where it is a resident in the upper portions of the forest belt, but 

 rarely straggling down into the northern parts of Central Europe. It has not been met with in 

 Great Britain, Greenland, or Iceland ; but it is found throughout the northern portion of the 

 Scandinavian peninsula. Mr. Robert Collett, in his notes on the ornithology of Norway, says 

 that " almost every year an individual of this species is killed here and there in the south of 

 the country, where it has occurred on the Hval Islands, near the Swedish coast. A female, 

 emaciated and apparently sterile, was shot near Christiania towards the end of March 1870. 

 As a breeding bird it is doubtless confined to the wooded districts along the Swedish and 

 Finnish frontier in Nordland and Finmark. In East Finmark it has been found several times of 

 late years, the last time in the summer of 1866." 



o 



According to Nilsson it is not uncommon in Angermanland and Jemtland, and around 

 Lycksele and Sorsele in Umea Lappmark, being more numerously met with in seasons when 

 the lemmings are abundant. It is a resident in the north, only straggling south exceptionally. 

 One was shot in November 1844 in the south-eastern corner of Dalecarlia ; another at Fiholmen, 

 in Sodermanland, on the 25th September 1825; a third is recorded by Hammargren (K. Vet. 

 Ak. Handl. 1853, p. 121) as having been shot on the north side of the Wener lake, in Werm- 

 land; and a fourth was drowned in the Wener in the autumn of 1855. Professor Lilljeborg 

 says that three females were killed in a forest near Upsala in the winter of 1859-60 ; and 

 Sundevall, who states that it straggles down to Sodermanland, Nerike, Wermland, &c, adds 

 that, according to Mr. Dyrh, an apothecary at Skelleftea, five of these Owls frequented a wood 

 about half a Swedish mile from that town late in August 1851. 



In Finland, according to Von Wright, it is of very rare occurrence, and he cites only two 

 instances of its having been met with — one shot on Esbo Karlo on the 18th August 1846, and 

 a second obtained in Kyrkslatt on the 5th April 1858. The latter bird I saw in the flesh, as I 

 happened to be at Helsingfors when Von Wright received it. 



In Northern Russia it is said to be not uncommon. Meves did not obtain it when there ; 

 but he says that there are several specimens in the Archangel Museum. According to Mr. 

 Sabanaeff, Mr. Martin met with it about thirty versts from the Poleffsky Zavoda ; and Meshakoff 

 states that it breeds in the Vologda Government, but he himself never met with it in the Ural. 



