80 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 
The female is considerably larger than the male, and is less white. Length 
of male twenty-three inches; that of female twenty-six inches. 
Few naturalists have seen the nestlings which are said to be covered with 
sooty black down, with brownish tips. 
There is much variation in the plumage, and Seebohm considers there are 
two races, one whiter, and the other darker. Two very white examples in the 
writer’s collection were received by him from opposite sides of N. America, one 
from Canada, the other from Oregon. 
Family—S TRIGIDAE. 
EurRopEAN Hawk-OwL. 
Surnia ulula, LINN. 
AMERICAN Hawk-OwL. 
Surnia funerea, LINN. 
HE Hawk-Owl is a very singular and interesting species that: inhabits the 
pine forests of the northern parts of the Old and New World. The 
American bird is darker in plumage and more broadly barred than the one found 
in the Palearctic region, but the two are bracketed together above, as they are 
merely local races of the same species. Some six or seven examples have occurred 
in the British Isles, the majority of them belonged to the darker American race. 
The first was captured off the Cornish coast in March, 1830, and carried to Ireland. 
One was shot near Yatton, in Somerset, while flying about on a bright afternoon 
in August, 1847; one at Unst, in the Shetland Isles, in the winter of 1860-61; 
two have been obtained near the Clyde, in Scotland, one December, 1863, the 
other November, 1868; another was seen on wing at Musbury, in South Devon, 
on an afternoon at the end of August, in 1869; and one, believed to be the only 
example that has been secured in this country of the paler European form, was 
obtained near Amesbury, in Wilts. As this Owl is resident in Norway, more 
