Northern Pygmy Owl

Northern Pygmy Owl

Other Names

• Mochuelo Californiano (Spanish)
• Chevêchette naine (French)

Basic Description

The Northern Pygmy-Owl may be tiny, but it’s a ferocious hunter with a taste for songbirds. These owls are mostly dark brown and white, with long tails, smoothly rounded heads, and piercing yellow eyes. They hunt during the day by sitting quietly and surprising their prey. As a defensive measure, songbirds often gather to mob sitting owls until they fly away. Mobbing songbirds can help you find these unobtrusive owls, as can listening for their call, a high-pitched series of toots.

 

• Cool Facts
  • When they find extra food, Northern Pygmy-Owls often cache their prey in tree cavities, or by hanging the prey on thorns, as shrikes are famous for doing.
  • Most owls have asymmetrically placed ears as well as flattened facial discs around the eyes. Both of these features are adaptations that give them better hearing. Interestingly, Northern Pygmy-Owls lack these features, and this may be an outcome of their diurnal habits and greater reliance on vision.
  • Small birds such as hummingbirds, wrens, warblers, jays, and blackbirds often mob Northern Pygmy-Owls—in fact, you may be able to find these owls by following a noisy commotion of songbirds focused on one spot.
  • Northern Pygmy-Owls raise a pair of tufts on the sides of their head when threatened by a predator, such as a hawk or a cat. They also have a pair of spots on the back of the neck that look a little like eyes. Scientists think these markings may help fool attackers or mobbers into thinking the owl is watching them.
  • Northern Pygmy-Owls, although not much larger than House Sparrows, sometimes take prey up to three times their own size, such as Northern Bobwhite, Northern Flicker, and even chickens!
  • The oldest recorded Northern Pygmy-Owl was a male, and at least 3 years, 11 months old when he was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Oregon in 2011.

   

  Habitat: 

  These owls are found in forests ranging from deciduous woods along streams to high-elevation fir and spruce forests at timberline. They also live in cottonwood, aspen, and mixed-conifer forests. In Mexico, they live in pine-oak and scrub forests, and in the southernmost part of their range in Honduras they live in highland pine and cloud forests. In winter, Northern Pygmy-Owls move to lower elevations and may come into towns, where they may start hunting songbirds at bird feeders.

  Food:

  Northern Pygmy-Owls mostly eat small birds, such as hummingbirds, chickadees, warblers, and sparrows, as well as small mammals, including shrews, moles, and chipmunks. However, they occasionally attack prey much larger than themselves, such as Northern Bobwhite and California Quail. They also eat insects such as beetles, butterflies, crickets, and dragonflies, as well as reptiles such as lizards and skinks.

   

  Behavior:

  The Northern Pygmy-Owl hunts mostly by day. They fly in an undulating pattern of rapid wing beats interrupted by closed-wing glides, similar to woodpeckers. Northern Pygmy-Owls are monogamous, at least within one year's breeding season. Males attract females to their nest site by perching at the entrance and giving a tooting call. Only the female incubates, while the male hunts and brings food back to the female and the nestlings. The main predators of Northern Pygmy-Owls are larger owls and raptors as well as some mammals such as weasels. Small birds such as nuthatches, robins, crossbills, wrens, creepers, hummingbirds, blackbirds, warblers, and jays frequently mob Northern Pygmy-Owls as they do other raptors—this behavior seems particularly bold considering small birds are what pygmy-owls eat. Some people have suggested that the eyespots on the back of the Northern Pygmy-Owl’s neck help deter mobbing birds.

   

  Data Source: allaboutbirds