122 



TENGMALM'S OWL. 



-+-Vlula Texgmalmi, Gmel. 



PLATE XXXII.— Male and Female. 



I procured a fine male of this species at Bangor, in Maine, on the Penob- 

 scot River, in the beginning of September, 1832; but am unacquainted with 

 its habits, never having seen another individual alive. Mr. Townsend 

 informs me that he found it on the Malade River Mountains, where it was 

 so tame and unsuspicious, that Mr. Nttttall was enabled to approach within 

 a few feet of it, as it sat upon the bushes. Dr. Richardson gives the 

 following notice respecting it in the Fauna Boreali-Americana: — "When it 

 accidentally wanders abroad in the day, it is so much dazzled by the light 

 of the sun as to become stupid, and it may then be easily caught by the 

 hand. Its cry in the night is a single melancholy note, repeated at intervals 

 of a minute or two. Mr. Hutchins informs us that it builds a nest of grass 

 half way up a pine tree, and lays two white eggs in the month of May. It 

 feeds on mice and beetles. I cannot state the extent of its range, but believe 

 that it inhabits all the woody country from Great Slave Lake to the United 

 States. On the banks of the Saskatchewan it is so common that its voice is 

 heard almost every night by the traveller, wherever he selects his bivouac." 



Strix Tengmalmi, Tengmalni's Owl, Swains, and Rich. F. Bor. Amer., vol. ii. p. 94. 

 Tengmalm's Owl, Strix Tengmalmi, Aud. Orn. Biog., vol. iv. p. 559. 



General colour of upper parts greyish-brown, tinged with olive; feathers 

 of the head with an elliptical central white spot; those of the neck with a 

 larger spot; scapulars with two or four large round spots near the end, and 

 some of the dorsal feathers and wing-coverts with single spots on the outer 

 web; all the quills margined with white spots on both webs, arranged in 

 transverse series, there being six on the outer web of the third; on the tail 

 five series of transversely elongated white spots. Disk yellowish- white, 

 anteriorly black; ruff yellowish-white, mottled with dusky; throat brown, 

 chin white; lower parts yellowish-white, longitudinally streaked with brown; 

 some of the feathers of the sides with two white spots; tarsal and digital 

 feathers greyish-yellow, with faint transverse brown bars. 



Male, 11, wing 6|f. Female, 12. 



