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11*;»®^: iii
ing like “ kew, kew,” and pronounced at intervals of about
two seconds throughout the livelong night. “ Towards the
end of April last year,” says the celebrated entomologist,
Spence, writing in 1881, (Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. v. p. 655),
“ one of these Owls established itself in the large Jarclin
Anglais, behind the house where we resided at Florence;
and, until our departure for Switzerland in the beginning
of June, I recollect but one or two instances in which it was
not constantly to be heard, as if in spite to the Nightingales
which abounded there, from nightfall to midnight (and probably
much later), whenever I chanced to be in the back part
of the house, or took our friends to listen to it, and always
with precisely the same unwearied cry, and the intervals
between each as regular as the ticking of a pendulum.”
Thompson relates that when proceeding from Malta to the
Morea on the 25th of April, 1841, at a distance of about
sixty miles from the coast of Calabria, the nearest land, an
Owl of this species on its northward flight came on board
the ship, and was captured just as itself had clutched a Lesser
White throat.
Mr. J . H. Gurney, Junior, has noticed that the Scops-
Owl resembles the Little Owl in its flight, but that it has a
much more attenuated appearance when perched, except it be
asleep. Then the feathers are so puffed out that the head is
undistinguishable from the body. I t may be remarked that
the attitude assumed by Owls varies much in the different
species and is often highly characteristic, though seldom
correctly delineated by the draughtsman, who generally makes
the posture and expression of the Tawny Owl serve for all
the rest.
This little Owl, according to Sir Andrew Smith, goes as
far south in Africa as Senegal; but the species described by
Swainson, under the name of Scops senegalensis, is distinct
from that found in Europe, and both are distinct from that
named S. capensis by Sir Andrew Smith, which is found at
the Cape. By his kindness I have been enabled to compare
the European Scops with both the African species. To the
eastward the European Scops is represented by an Indian
species, known among other names as S. bakkamcena, with
which some ornithologists regard the S. japonicus of China
and Japan as identical, while others unite this latter to the
European bird.*
The beak is black; the irides bright yellow ; the feathers
of the facial disk minutely speckled with greyisli-wliite and
brown, the margin of the disk on each side defined by a
darker brown line ; from the beak over the top of the head
several longitudinal streaks of dark brown on a pale brown
ground, forming a median band passing over the head
between the tufts, which are short, made up of a few feathers
slightly elongated, differing but little in colour from the
grey, speckled feathers of the facial disk; the back chestnut
and pale wood-brown, mottled with grey, and barred with
dark lines ; the outer web of the wing-feathers barred alternately
with white and speckled brown; tail barred and spotted
with black, brown and pale wood-brown; the -whole of the
breast and belly varied with greyish-white and pale brown,
with several decided streaks and patches of umber-brown;
under tail-coverts and tail-feathers beneath greyish-white,
mottled and barred transversely with brown ; feathers of the
tarsus brownish-grey with a median streak; toes brown ;
claws white at the base, nearly black at the tip.
Adult males and females are very similar in plumage, but
young birds have a more rufous tinge. Length about seven
inches.
* North America is inhabited by an allied species, S. asio (Linn.), of which an
example was recorded by Dr. Hobson in the ‘ Naturalist* for 1855 (p. 169) as
having been shot near Kirkstall Abbey in Yorkshire in 1852; and, according to
Mr. Stevenson, another specimen is supposed to have been killed near Yarmouth
in Norfolk.
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