For owls that are superb.
Photo by Mike Lentz
The time for Saw Whet owl pairs to come together and create new life is here, as signified by the abundance of calling in the forest these days/nights. These Owls are strictly nocturnal, with activity beginning at late dusk. They have excellent low light vision and can easily find prey at night by sight.
Let's fill out these teams!!
Eagle Owl
There's a few eagle owls!
Eurasian (the most popular)
Indian
Pharaoh (I like this one too)
Cape
Arabian
Greyish
Spotted
Verreaux (the fugly one from last week's post)
Spot Bellied
Barred
Fraser's
Akun
Philippine
Dusky
Shelley's
Whaaaaaaaaat!! So many!
I knew the Eurasian one because it gets mentioned on the lists of largest owls in the world. I thought it was the one and only.
I honestly forgot the Verreaux was also an Eagle Owl. Just remembered Verreaux, which is such a wizard name haha.
I just looked up the Pharaoh, and I would never in my life have guessed a difference between that owl and the GHO. (Except, obviously, the desert pictures lol). Even it's face markings are so similar to GHO!
Which makes me wonder why the GHO didn't get named as an Eagle Owl of some sort? Quirk of history, I suppose.
I've got some more mind blowing info for you!
GHO and Eurasian Eagle Owl are very closely related, with their closest mutual relative being... The Snowy Owl!
In one case, a zoo-kept male great horned owl and female Eurasian eagle-owl produced an apparently healthy hybrid. Genetic testing indicates that the snowy owl, not the Eurasian eagle-owl, is the most closely related living species.
The Snowies and the Great Horned and Lesser Horned Owls all came to be as waves of migration over the Bering Land Bridge.
The great horned owl represents one of the one or two radiations of the genus across the Bering land bridge to the Americas. Whereas the Magellanic horned owl clearly divided once the owl had spread through the Americas, the consensus seems to be that the snowy owl and the great horned owl divided back in Eurasia and the snowy then spread back over the Arctic through northernmost North America separately from the radiation of the horned owl. The great horned and Eurasian eagle-owls may in fact be conspecifics, based on similarities in life history, geographic distribution, and appearance.
So the GHO and Snowy are both species of genus Bubo, along with all those Eagle Owls!
The naming difference was probably they just didn't know they were related at the time. Since the GHO is North America only, they wouldn't have known the populations were once the same. (Just guessing here)
As of 2020, many have also put the fish owls in the same clade as the Bubo owls, making them cousins.
What a wild family history!
It's so interesting to watch the retrospective reclassification of biology as we learn more and more. To compare what people thought they knew a hundred years ago with what we know now.
Yes, exactly!
Science isn't about finding "answers" so much as just a progressively deeper understanding. I get people getting frustrated when "science changes," but it should be seen as a feature, not a bug.
In another hundred years, people will think that we were ignorant about many things, but it isn't our fault. We're improving and building on our previous collective knowledge, and those in the future will just be building on what we learn the hard way too.
Still about half the teams need to be filled out for the Superbowl ² game. Let me know who you want to see play!
This is all we've got so far, so let me know who else we need in it!
Kansas City Screech
San Franciscowl Bay Owls
See the pinned thread for more details.
Burrowing Owl
Great Horned Owl
Saw Whet Owl
Great Gray Owl
Long Eared Owl