122 
TENGMALM’S OWL, 
Ylula Tengmalmi, 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. Nuttall was enabled tq 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, Tengmalm'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, longi- 
tudinally streaked with brown ; some of the feathers of the sides with two 
white spots ; tarsal and digital feathers greyish-yellow, with faint trans- 
verse brown bars. 
Male, 11, wing 61-|. Female, 12. 
