_Ephialtes grammicus._—+mihi.+
[5] Length 14 inches, expanse 31, tail 4⁶⁄₁₀, flexure 9¹⁄₄, rictus
1⁴⁄₁₀, tarsus 2, middle toe 1¹⁄₁₀, claw ⁷⁄₁₀.
Irides hazel; pupils very large, blue; beak pale blue-grey; feet
dull lead colour; claws horny grey; cere blackish-grey. General
plumage above dusky brown, becoming on the head and under parts,
umber: each feather marked with a medial band of blackish hue, and
several undulated transverse bars of the same. Egrets of about ten
feathers, forming conical _horns_ about 1 inch high, giving the
countenance a great resemblance to that of a cat. Facial feathers
unwebbed, pale umber; those of inner angle of eye, setaceous,
black; operculum edged with black; scaly, sub-aural feathers pale
fawn-colour, with arrowy centres of black; the outermost rows
also mottled with black at the tip; these feathers meet under
the chin in a ruff. Feathers of back, rump, tail, scapulars, and
wing-coverts, minutely pencilled with blackish; shoulders deepening
into almost black; primary greater coverts very dark. Quills and
tail pale brown, with broad transverse bars, and minute pencillings
of black, confused on the tertials. Wings short, rounded, hollow;
third, fourth, fifth, sixth quills subequal. Breast bright umber,
with transverse wavy mottlings, and a dash of dark brown down each
feather. Belly, thighs, and vent, plain fawn-colour; the feathers
downy, filamentous. Under wing-coverts yellowish-brown, a little
mottled, the greater broadly tipped with black. Quills beneath,
basal half pale-yellowish, apical half nearly as above. Whole
tarsus feathered.
Intestinal canal 17 inches long; 2 cœca, distant 2 inches from the
cloaca, 2¹⁄₂ inches long, slender at their base, dilating into
sacs, thin, and full of dark liquid.
I have not been able to find any published description of this
well-marked Owl. In the MSS. of Dr. Robinson,[6] however, there is a
very elaborate description of the species, drawn up from an adult male,
but agreeing with mine, which is from a female; save that he applies
the term _cinnamon_, to the parts which I designate as _umber_. Three
individuals, all females, have at separate times come into my hands,
two of which were immature, as manifested by the downiness of the
plumage. One of these was brought me on the 31st of March by a man who
obtained it on Bluefields Mountain. He was engaged in felling a tree,
in which the bird was; being disturbed it flew to another at a short
distance, when it was struck down with a stick. The time was about
noon. The person informed me that he had seen the bird there before,
in company with another, which he supposed to be its mate. The stomach
of this specimen, a large muscular sac, was filled with an immense
quantity of slender bones, which appeared to be those of Anoles, as I
discovered by the iguaniform teeth of at least five sets of jaws, of
various sizes. They were enveloped in a quantity of fetid, black fluid.
There were also the remains of beetles, and of orthopterous insects.
[6] Dr. Anthony Robinson, a surgeon practising in Jamaica about
the middle of the last century, accumulated a very large mass of
valuable information on the Zoology and Botany of the island,
which is contained in five folio MS. volumes, in the possession
of the Jamaica Society at Kingston. The specific descriptions,
admeasurements, and details of colouring are executed with an
elaborate accuracy worthy of a period of science far advanced of
that in which he lived. Accompanying the MSS. are several volumes
of carefully executed drawings, mostly coloured. To these volumes
I have been indebted, as the reader will find, for many valuable
notes, which I thus acknowledge with gratitude.
Of another, the adult from which my description was taken, struck down
while sitting on a mango tree at Tait-Shafton, on the morning of April
6th,—the stomach was stuffed with the hair and bones of a portion of a
rat, and the legs of a large spider; a _Lycosa_, as I believe—certainly
a ground spider. Most of the eggs in the ovary were minute, though some
were as large as mustard-seed; by which I gathered that the period of
incubation was yet distant, though the spring was so far advanced.
The third I had the advantage of seeing alive: one whose downiness
indicated youth, was brought me on the 24th of the same month. Its
imbecility by day was shewn by the mode of its capture. It was in a
small tree on Bluefields Mountain, when a boy, by shaking the tree,
caused it to fall to the ground, where it lay helpless. It was cross
all the time I had it, snapping the beak loudly, and striking out as
endeavouring to seize the hand; uttering now and then a shrill wail,
most plaintive to hear. The globular head, and round full eyes, over
which the nictitating membrane was constantly being drawn, gave the
living bird an odd appearance. On dissecting it I found in the stomach
remains of mice and elytra of small beetles.
From these instances we can pretty well infer the food of the present
species to consist largely of shelled insects, as well as lizards and
small mammalia. For a while I knew not what to make of a statement of
Robinson’s, that in his male he found “nothing but some particles of
maize;” as also that in another, with “the remains of scarabs,” there
was “some guinea-corn, and maize.” But I am informed that this Owl is
known to enter dove-cotes, and devour the young pigeons; the grain,
therefore, in these specimens was probably in the stomachs of their
prey, and remained in the Owls after the prey had been dissolved,
because the stomach of a rapacious bird refuses to digest vegetable
food. It would probably have been cast up, if the birds had survived.
I know not whether this is the species that Mr. Hill means when he
says, in “Notes of a Year,” published in the Companion to the Jamaica
Almanack, for 1840,—“After sunset [in evenings in August] the Brown
Owl, seated on the dead limb of a tree in some savanna, makes little
circuits of about thirty feet diameter, and returns to perch again. I
should judge that it is darting at Coleopterous insects, occasional
fire-flies being seen wandering at about ten or a dozen feet above the
highest elevation at which the Owls are flying.”
The flesh of this species is soft and flabby in texture, and pale in
colour.