Western Screech Owl Otus kennicotti
Rancho San Antonio Park, California
18 June 2006

The Western Screech Owl in the photographs below was found about a fortnight before I went to California, roosting right by a main path in Rancho San Antonio Park, a very popular hiking and recreation area along Cristo Rey Drive (just off the Interstate 280 and near the cities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Cupertino).

Californian birder and old friend Jack Cole and I visited the site three times before we eventually found this bird - on our first two visits (unbeknownst to us) it was apparently just out of sight having dropped down into a hollow behind the split trunk shown below! Third time lucky though, and I can’t imagine ever again getting such lengthy looks at such a beautiful - and totally unconcerned I would add - owl: truly unforgettable…

UPDATE: Jack sent me the following info after taking a birder from Seattle to see this same bird - which remarkably has now been joined by a second - on September 01 2006: “A lot of the non-birder passers-by who regularly walk, run, hike and bike at Rancho San Antonio have learned about the screech owl from the birders and photographers they often encounter there and now routinely look for it. The regulars told us that they are seeing the second owl side-by-side with first all the time these days. They said the second owl shows up every day and remains in view for hours at a time. Sure enough, the second owl emerged from the cavity aout 11:30 and was still there when we left about 12:30.”

Much of the following information is taken from Deane Lewis’s superb Owl Pages website, specifically the page on Western Screech Owl at www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Megascops&species=kennicottii

• First described in 1867, the Western Screech Owl Megascops/Otus kennicotti (the species name kennicotti honours Robert Kennicott, a nineteenth-century American explorer and naturalist) is a mainly non-migratory resident from south-coastal and extreme southeastern Alaska, coastal (excluding Queen Charlotte Islands) and southern British Columbia, northern Idaho, western Montana, northwestern Wyoming, Colorado, extreme western Oklahoma, and western Texas south to Baja California.
  They also occur from northern Sinaloa and across the Mexican highlands through Chihuahua and Coahuila as far as the Distrito Federal.

  Along the northwest coast, they inhabit humid Douglas-fir, western hemlock, western red cedar, and Sitka spruce forests along the edges of clearings, rivers, and lakes. Further inland they occupy a narrow ecological niche of lowland deciduous forests, especially riparian woodlands along river bottoms. Southern populations inhabit lowland riparian forests, oak-filled arroyos, desert saguaro and cardon cacti stands, Joshua tree and mesquite groves, and open pine and pinyon-juniper forests. They avoid dense forests because Great Horned Owls use that habitat, and high elevation forests. In general, they require open forests, with an abundance of small mammals and insect prey, and cavities for nesting.

  Western Screech Owls occur in two colour morphs - a widespread grey form, and a rare redddish form found only in the Pacific Northwest. There is much individual variation and grey-phase birds in the dry southwest are a pale gray, while birds in the humid northwest are darker and browner.
  

  
  The Western Screech Owl is likely to be confused with the Eastern Screech Owl and Whiskered Screech Owl. These Owls can be distinguished by bill colour (Eastern Screech Owls have gray-green bills while Western Screech Owls have gray to black bills) and their different calls. Western and Eastern Screech Owls only occur together locally in eastern Colorado and southern Texas. Western and Whiskered Screech Owls only occur together in southern Arizona and Mexico.

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.