Red Phase of the California Screech Owl?
Red Phase of the California Screech Owl?
An owl that has remained in my collection since the early eighties. not satisfactorily identified, and of unusual interest on account of its small size and peculiar color, was sent to Mr. Wm. Brewster last November to be compared with his fine northwestern series of screech owls. Mr. Brewster says (in part) in regard to my specimen: “Your Megascops (Male; No. 339; Haywards, California; December 15, 1882) is unlike any screech owl from California that I have ever seen. I should refer it to kennicotti, or rather to the small form of kennicotti which I described some years ago (Auk. Vol. VII, 1891, pp. 141-143). Indeed it agrees very closely with one of my examplesof the latter, saturatus, from Portland, Oregon.
This specimen measures: length 9 (inches); wing 6.25; tail 3.30; tarsus 1.50; bill from nostril .50. The entire upper parts are tinged with a tawny or rusty cinnamon, the whole crown of head and hind-neck being darker, with the shaft-streaks of the feathers a dull black, darker than on other parts of the back, giving it a sort of hooded or mantled appearance; the legs are a bright cinnamon, dark-barred on the tarsus; the lower margins of the auriculars are so strongly marked as to appear as bars of black; the middle of the throat is more cinnamon-colored than other parts of the breast. I have as yet been unable to find a similar specimen in the various Pacific coast collections so far examined. So it stands as either a unique specimen of the red phase taken in California, or of the race kennicotti of the Puget Sound region.
W. OTTO EMERSON
Haywards, Cal.
