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(Strix Bubo, Linn.—Le Duc, ou Grand Duc, Buff.)
IS one of the largest of the British Owls, and has a powerful as well as a dignified look. The tufts or ear feathers are more than two inches long. The bill is strong, much hooked, and black; claws the same; irides reddish yellow; legs very stout, and covered with a great thickness of short mottled brown feathers; toes the same down to the claws. The predominant colours of the plumage are very dark brown and ferruginous, but mixed and beautifully variegated with markings and shades of black, brown, and yellow, with spots of white, crossed with zig-zag lines, and innumerable minute specklings of white, ash-grey, and brown. The outline of our figure was taken from a living bird exhibited in a show, the markings of the plumage from a very ill stuffed specimen, which was taken on the coast of Norway, and obligingly lent to this work by Captain Wm Gilchrist, of this port. This bird is sometimes met with in the Northern Scottish isles, where it preys upon Rabbits and Grouse, which are numerous there, but it is very rarely seen in England: it generally lays two or three eggs; Temminck says they are white.
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