Owls of Peru – Part 3: Humid forests

Photographing owls in the humid forest is of course much more difficult than in dry forests due the tall and dense vegetation, frequent rain and humidity in the air, and near complete canopy closure that makes it extremely dark and so much harder to see movement and silhouettes. Even though I saw more species of owls in the humid forests, I have fewer species to offer in this post.

One of the highlights of this trip was getting superb and repeat views of Cinnamon Screech-Owl at La Esperanza (as I mentioned in the previous post about Long-whiskered Owlet). The Cinnamon Screech-Owl is a rare and patchily distributed species that seems to be associated with outlying ridges more than with the eastern slope of the main Andean cordillera (unlike their counterpart the Rufescent Screech-Owl). Our first view of this species was the female photographed below (we thought for a second we had found the owlet) but despite being so difficult to see elsewhere, we had multiple sightings at La Esperanza – remarkable! In the next two photos see if you can see the differences between the female (first) and male (second)?

… the male has a deeper colouring overall and darker feathering of the facial disk and perhaps darker streaking as well (and a different voice). Can’t resist sharing a few more photos of this stunningly beautiful, little owl showing the underpart and upperpart colouration (look at the magnificent tail pattern and the barring in the flight feathers too!)…

At a similar elevation to Cinnamon Screech-Owl (slightly lower overall) one can find the much larger Band-bellied Owl. Actually, Band-bellied seems to co-occur with Rufescent Screech-Owl in many areas. I managed to see Band-bellied Owl twice on this trip, once near Moyobamba and again on the Manu Road, but in the tall cloud forest it proved extremely difficult to get photos of this beauty. The photo below was the best I managed. The four species in the genus Pulsatrix (Spectacled, Band-bellied, Short-browed, and Tawny-browed) are all very similar and all sport dark upperparts and breast contrasting with a pale belly and with prominent white or buff face markings that frame the face in “spectacles” of sorts…

The Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl occurs across a wide range of elevation in South America and, at least in my limited experience, seems much more nocturnal in habits than the bird that most North Americans call Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (many now consider the Central and North American taxon to be a separate species called Ridgway’s Pygmy-Owl, although the AOU has not split them yet). These photos were taken in Moyobamba at the same elevation as the Band-bellied Owl. This bird had an interestesting habit of appearing more rufous from certain angles and more brown from other angles...

If you descend the eastern slope of the Andes towards the Amazon basin, you come into the range of the Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl complex. Some authors in fact, now split this species into two: Northern Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl (north of the Amazon) and Southern Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl (south of the Amazon). I was fortunate to get some great looks at Southern Tawny-bellied Screech-Owl on the lower section of the Manu Road near Atalaya. You can see how this species got their name.


I was particularly fortunate to watch this owl consume a cricket (though the views were a bit vertical). Just as I have watched Eastern Screech-Owls do, they seemed to remove certain hard parts first, for example the legs...

That ends this post on the owls of Peru. You can view larger files of these photos at: http://artusophotos.com/3_Nightbirds/index.htm (and other nightbirds of course!).