300 TENGMALM’S OWL. 
forests of the various branches of the Carpathians and the Alps, 
from Styria and the Tyrol westward, as well as in the Vosges, the 
Jura; and the mountains of Dauphiné; while it has occurred on 
both sides of the Pyrenees, though not further south in Spain. In 
other parts of Europe it is chiefly a migrant. Eastward, it appears 
to range through the forests of Siberia down to the Altai Mountains, 
and eastward to Baikalia, and even to the Sea of Japan, though not 
observed in Kamchatka ; while in Arctic America it is represented 
bya slightly darker form, known to separatists as Wyctala richardsont. 
Our earliest knowledge of the breeding-habits of this, as of so 
many other Arctic species, was derived from Wolley, who found that 
in Lapland it occupied the ¢y//as or wus (nesting-boxes, formed of 
logs hollowed out at either end, with a hole cut in the side) set up by 
the inhabitants for the use of the Golden-eye Ducks ; it also deposits 
its eggs in holes in trees, and often in some former abode of the 
Black Woodpecker. The smooth white eggs, laid between the 
beginning of May and the end of June, are 4-6, and exceptionally 
ro in number: measurements 1°28 by 1 in. The food, which con- 
sists of lemmings, mice and other rodents, with large beetles and 
small birds, is generally procured during the latter half of the day ; 
though sunshine does not incommode a bird which passes the 
summer in the continuous light of the high north. The call-note is 
a soft, long-drawn whistle. 
The adult male has the upper parts umber-brown, with small 
white spots on the top of the head, large white patches on the back 
and wing-coverts, and five lines of spots—forming bars—on the tail- 
feathers ; facial disk nearly complete, dull white with a dark outer 
ring; under parts greyish-white, irregularly barred and streaked with 
brown ; legs and toes thickly covered with whitish brown-speckled 
feathers (in the Little Owl the feathers on the legs are short and the 
toes have merely bristles) ; bill yellowish-white. Length 9 in. ; wing 
65-7 in. The female is slightly larger than the male, but has the 
white spots less pronounced ; the young are much darker than the 
adults, and the spots are chiefly on the wings and tail. A charac- 
teristic of this Owl, as shown by Prof. Collett of Christiania, is that 
the ear-regions in the skull itself, as well as the orifices, are unequal 
in size, and hence the skull is not symmetrical. 
The late Sir William M. E. Milner recorded (Zool. p. 7104) the 
occurrence of the North American Saw-whet Owl, WVyctala acadica, 
near Beverley in Yorkshire. He was probably mistaken or imposed 
upon. 
