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Short-eared Owl | Asio flammeus
Velduil | Búho campestre
The Short-eared Owl is an owl of open country with one of the largest ranges of any bird. In the Caribbean, resident populations live in Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, where it is called múcaro real. It often hunts at dusk and sometimes in the middle of the day, with a low, floppy flight and glides over grass and rough ground.
Voice
Usually silent outside the breeding season. When disturbed a hoarse, barking kyeff. In display flight the male gives a series of low boo-boo-boo notes and claps its wings.
Recording: Kevin Guille — CC0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
34–43 cm, medium-sized, with a large round head, very short ear tufts that are usually invisible and yellow-orange eyes set in black surrounds. The facial disc is pale. The upperparts are buff with dark spots and streaks; the breast is heavily streaked dark, the belly paler and more finely streaked. In flight the wings are long and narrow, with a buff patch at the base of the primaries above, a dark carpal patch below and a dark wingtip with narrow bars.
Confusion species
Stygian Owl Asio stygius is darker, with long ear tufts and a dark face, and lives in forest. American Barn Owl Tyto furcata and Ashy-faced Owl Tyto glaucops also hunt over open ground, but have dark eyes in a heart-shaped disc and unstreaked underparts. Burrowing Owl Athene cunicularia is much smaller and often sits on the ground.
Habitat
Savanna, pasture, short-grass marshes, rice fields, sugar cane and other open fields, also citrus plantations and open ground with scattered scrub. It hunts low over the ground for mice and rats, also birds and large insects. It nests on the ground in tall grass or rough vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident in Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico (including Vieques, where very rare), everywhere local and not numerous. Birds from North America rarely reach the Bahamas and Cuba in winter; a vagrant elsewhere in the region. Outside the region in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and on Hawaii and the Galápagos.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best at dusk over large open grasslands and rice fields. In Puerto Rico it is seen regularly around Salinas and in the Caño Tiburones nature reserve. A bird flapping low over the grass with deep, irregular wingbeats and then dropping down is characteristic.
Conservation status
Not threatened as a species. Caribbean populations are small; they suffer from the loss and conversion of grassland, mowing during the breeding season and introduced predators that raid ground nests.
Scientific name
Asio flammeus | (Pontoppidan, 1763)
Pontoppidan described the species in 1763 as Strix Flammea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Asio was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Asio is the Latin name of a horned or eared owl. flammeus is Latin for 'flame-coloured'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.