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Middle American Screech Owl | Megascops guatemalae
Roodwangschreeuwuil | Tecolote vermiculado
The Middle American Screech Owl is the screech owl of the humid and dry lowland forests from Mexico to Costa Rica and western Panama. It was formerly considered one species together with the Choco Screech Owl and related forms from South America; the boundary between the two species now lies in Panama. It is resident, lives hidden in dense forest and is best recognised by its long, purring song.
Voice
A long, purring trill of short notes, a few to ten seconds long, rising slightly in pitch and volume and then ending abruptly or fading; recalls the trill of a toad. Also a shorter, stuttering series of notes. Heard mainly shortly after sunset and before dawn.
Recording: Max Noack — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–23 cm, with short ear tufts, yellow eyes and feathered legs. There are grey-brown, brown and rufous birds; rufous birds are especially numerous in humid forest. The plumage is finely vermiculated, with little contrast. The facial disc has a weak, often broken dark rim. The upperparts show a row of white spots on the scapulars; the underparts have thin dark streaks with fine cross-lines. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
Choco Screech Owl Megascops centralis is very similar and in the field is best distinguished by range; it lives in central and eastern Panama. Tropical Screech Owl Megascops choliba has a distinct black rim to the facial disc, a herringbone pattern on the underparts and a short trill with closing notes. Pacific Screech Owl Megascops cooperi is larger and greyer and lives on the dry Pacific slope; its song is a series of rapid, barking notes. Balsas Screech Owl Megascops seductus is larger and lives in dry forest in the Balsas basin.
Habitat
Humid and semi-humid lowland and foothill forest, dry deciduous and seasonal forest, gallery forest, old secondary forest and forest edges, mostly below about 1500 metres. It nests in tree cavities and old woodpecker holes. At night it hunts from a low branch in the lower and middle storeys of the forest for large insects, spiders and small vertebrates.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Resident from Mexico southward: on the Pacific slope from southern Sonora and Chihuahua, on the Caribbean slope from southern Tamaulipas, and on the Yucatán Peninsula. Also in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, in northern and eastern Nicaragua, in Costa Rica mainly on the Caribbean slope in Heredia, Limón and Alajuela, locally also in the northwest and on the southern Pacific slope, and in western Panama in Bocas del Toro. Scarce in El Salvador. Not found outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Costa Rica it is often reported on the Caribbean slope, for example around La Selva Biological Station, where it calls in the forest after sunset. In Mexico it can be heard in Yucatán and in the forests of Veracruz and Oaxaca. The song carries far and sounds like a toad or an insect; with a light the bird can often be found on a low branch.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species is widespread and locally common, but depends on forest and suffers from lowland deforestation.
Scientific name
Megascops guatemalae | (Sharpe, 1875)
Sharpe described the species in 1875 as Scops guatemalae; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Megascops was introduced in 1848 by Kaup. Megascops combines the Greek megas 'great' with Scops, the old genus name of the scops owls. guatemalae is Latin for 'of Guatemala', after the type locality. The specimen the first description was based on came from Guatemala.