495 
Birds of Southern Cameroon. 
caught it with his hands, as it was trying to fly off with a 
fowl that was too heavy for it. 
Lophostrix letti. 
Reichenow, Y. A. i. p. 663. 
Scops letti Sharpe, Ibis, 1904, pp. 104, 604; 1907, p. 427. 
No. 3291. S ad. Assobam, Dec. 1908. 
No. 3292. ? young. ,, „ 
These two examples were killed at one shot; there were 
three sitting on a limb together. The old bird had in its 
stomach the hard parts of brightly-coloured beetles. 
Not only is the colour of the plumage of the young one 
very different from that of the adult, being of a pale rust- 
colour with white edges to the feathers, and about the face 
entirely white ; but the colour of the iris is bright yellow, 
while in the adult it is brownish-yellow. The white face and 
yellow eyes would help to make the young Owl visible in the 
darkness of a hollow tree. 
The plumage of this young Owl is remarkable on account 
of its structure as well as its colour. It is a mesoptyle ” 
plumage, the feathers being somewhat downy, yet having- 
shafts, and bearing on their tips many of the first down- 
feathers, as in the illustration of “ mesoptyle feather of 
Tawny Owl ” in PycrafPs r History of Birds/ p. 270. 
Mr. Pycraft has pointed out to me a further peculiarity, in 
that the rectrices, which belong to the “ teleoptyle,” or final 
plumage, bear, each on its tip, a mesoptyle tail-feather. 
Glaucidium pycrafti. (Plate VII.) 
Glaucidiumpycrafti Bates, Bull. B. O. C. vol. xxvii. p. 85. 
No. 4153. S. Bitye, It. Ja, March 26, 1910. 
Adult male. Head dark greyish-brown ; back and upper 
surface of the wings dark umber-brown; feathers of the nape 
and sides of the neck each with a broad white subterminal 
bar, together forming a white-spotted collar; lores and a 
short superciliary stripe white. Quills blackish, with 
umber-brown bars extending across both webs and becoming 
whitish-buff towards the margins of the inner webs; the outer¬ 
most primary shorter than any of the others. Tail-feathers 
