Strix scutulata Raffles, Trans. Linn. Soc. (1822), 13, pt. 2, 280.
Ninox scutulata Sharpe, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. (1875), 2, 156
(part); Hand-List (1899), 1, 290; Oates, Cat. Birds' Eggs (1902),
2, 329; McGregor and Worcester, Hand-List (1906), 47.
Palawan (Platen). Southern India, Malay Peninsula, Greater Sunda
Islands, Ceylon, Tenasserim.
"Adult (type of Athene malaccensis [30]).--Above deep chocolate-brown,
the head slightly darker, the scapulars with concealed white
bars; wing-coverts exactly like the back and equally uniform, the
primary-coverts blackish, quills dark brown, slightly washed externally
with ocherous, the primaries inclining to rufous-ocherous toward
their tips, all the wing-feathers nearly uniform, with no lighter
cross-bands, the inner secondaries barred with white, but these bars
entirely concealed; upper tail-coverts uniform chocolate-brown like
the back; tail-feathers ashy brown, rather paler at tips, and crossed
with five blackish bands (one basal and concealed); sides of face
chocolate-brown, as also the sides of the neck, the latter slightly
washed with rufous; forehead and lores whitish, the latter obscured
by blackish shaft-lines; chin whitish, slightly streaked with brown;
rest of under surface rufous-chocolate, the throat washed with buff,
the breast varied with white, generally as if streaked, the margins to
the feathers being whitish; on the abdomen the white predominating and
cutting across the feather, so as to form an oval spot of brown at the
tips of the abdominal plumes, leg-feathers brown; under tail-coverts
whitish; under wing-coverts rufous-chocolate, the inner feathers
washed and barred with ochraceous-buff, the edge of the wing whitish;
the greater series sepia-brown, nearly uniform, excepting for a few
ochraceous bars near the base, thus resembling the inner lining of the
wing, which is sepia-brown, with a few ochraceous bars near the base of
the quills. Length, 317; wing, 213; tail, 122; tarsus, 28." (Sharpe.)