I was excited to see a tropical screech owl at Tinamu Reserve in Colombia. We were with two guides and came across another guided group ahead of us. They mentioned that they'd just seen an owl back on the trail we'd just come up. So we back-tracked and found it sitting quite far back from the trail up in a tree. The sun was positioned poorly for a good photo, but I got one that I was relatively happy with.
The tropical screech owl is found in every country in South America as well as Costa Rica, Panama and Trinidad. There are nine subspecies and it appears we saw the subspecies cruciger which is found in Trinidad, eastern Colombia and Venezuela, east to the Guianas and south to eastern Peru.
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| Tropical screech owl range - from Wikipedia |
It has much variation in color and is polymorphic, meaning that individuals in the same area can look vastly different. It is mostly gray-brown, or less commonly brown or rufous. It has a distinctive blackish edge to the face and yellow Irises. The undersides are pale with a black herringbone pattern.
I assume it is named for the noise it makes?
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