The Costa Rican pygmy owl (''Glaucidium costaricanum'') is a small "

typical owl The true owls or typical owls (family Strigidae) are one of the two generally accepted families of owls, the other being the barn owls (Tytonidae). This large family comprises 230 living or recently extinct species in 24 genera. The typical owl ...

" in subfamily Surniinae. It is found in Costa Rica and

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

.HBW and BirdLife International (2020) ''Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world'' Version 5. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v5_Dec20.zip xls zipped 1 MBretrieved 27 May 2021

Taxonomy and systematics

Initially, the Costa Rican pygmy owl was described as a subspecies of the

Andean pygmy owl The Andean pygmy owl (''Glaucidium jardinii'') is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. It is found in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Taxonomy and systematics The Andean pygmy owl is monotypic. Description The Andean pygmy ow ...

(''G. jardinii''); in 2000, the North American Classification Committee (NACC), of what was then the American Ornithologists' Union (now the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

), accepted it as a separate species, with other taxonomic systems following-suit. The Costa Rican pygmy owl is more closely related to the

northern pygmy owl The northern pygmy owl (''Glaucidium californicum'') is a small owl native to western North America. Taxonomy Some taxonomic authorities, including the International Ornithologists' Union, separate this species from the mountain pygmy owl, the ...

complex (''G. gnoma

sensu lato ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular c ...

'') than to the Andean.Richard C. Banks, Carla Cicero, Jon L. Dunn, Andrew W. Kratter, Henri Ouellet, Pamela C. Rasmussen, J. V. Remsen, Jr., James D. Rising, and Douglas F. Stotz. "Forty-second supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union ''Check-list of North American Birds''". ''The Auk'' 2000, vol. 117:847-858 retrieved March 7, 2022Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ Retrieved 25 August 2021 The species is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

Description

The Costa Rican pygmy owl is around long, with males weighing about , while the larger females weigh as much as . Adults have two color morphs; one is mostly

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model use ...

and the other is

rufous Rufous () is a color that may be described as reddish-brown or brownish- red, as of rust or oxidised iron. The first recorded use of ''rufous'' as a color name in English was in 1782. However, the color is also recorded earlier in 1527 as a di ...

. The head and upper body parts are a basal color with lighter, paler spots; the tail is the same color, with four white bands and a white tip. The nape has a pair of blackish spots with pale borders that resemble "eyes" on the back of the head. The breast and belly are white and the flanks are the basal color. The

facial disc In ornithology, the facial disc is the concave collection of feathers on the face of some birds—most notably owls—surrounding the eyes. The concavity of the facial disc forms a circular paraboloid that collects sound waves and directs those wa ...

is the basal color, with narrow buff and white marks, while the eyes and feet are yellow, the

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The ...

greenish yellow, and the

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movable bon ...

is a light brown with a yellow tip.Schulenberg, T. S. (2020). Costa Rican Pygmy-Owl (''Glaucidium costaricanum''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.crpowl.01 retrieved March 7, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The Costa Rican pygmy owl is typically found, at some elevation, within the

Cordillera Central Central Cordillera refers to the New Guinea Highlands. Cordillera Central, meaning ''central range'' in Spanish, may refer to the following mountain ranges: * Cordillera Central, Andes (disambiguation), several mountain ranges in South America ** ...

and

Cordillera de Talamanca The Cordillera de Talamanca is a mountain range that lies in the southeast half of Costa Rica and the far west of Panama. Much of the range and the area around it is included in La Amistad International Park, which also is shared between the two ...

of Costa Rica, and (patchily) into western

, where it inhabits the

canopy Canopy may refer to: Plants * Canopy (biology), aboveground portion of plant community or crop (including forests) * Canopy (grape), aboveground portion of grapes Religion and ceremonies * Baldachin or canopy of state, typically placed over an ...

and edges of humid

montane Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is a crucial ...

oak and

evergreen forest An evergreen forest is a forest made up of evergreen trees. They occur across a wide range of climatic zones, and include trees such as conifers and holly in cold climates, eucalyptus, Live oak, acacias, magnolia, and banksia in more temperat ...

s. In its native Costa Rica, the species ranges from about above sea level, on the Caribbean slope, and from on the Pacific slope.

Behavior

Movement

The Costa Rican pygmy owl is a year-round resident throughout its range.

Feeding

The Costa Rican pygmy owl forages both day and night. It hunts from a low perch in dense foliage and takes prey in "a short, swift dash". If the target is missed, the bird typically returns to the perch rather than pursuing. Its diet has not been defined in detail but is known to include birds, small mammals and other vertebrates, and large

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s. Like other pygmy owls, they swish their tails from side to side when agitated.

Breeding

The Costa Rican pygmy owl's breeding

phenology Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). Examples include the date of emergence of leav ...

is not well known. It nests in naturally-occurring tree crevices and holes, and may potentially repurpose the disused nests of

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar region ...

s or other tree-dwelling birds. Average

clutch A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission, especially from a drive shaft to a driven shaft. In the simplest application, clutches connect and disconnect two rotating shafts (drive shafts or line shafts ...

sizes are not certain, though one nest found in March 2020 contained three eggs.

Vocalization

The Costa Rican pygmy owl's song is "a long series of clear, unmodulated toots in an irregular rhythm". The toots can be in pairs, in a series of three pairs, or in a continuous series of single notes. When excited, it gives a faster, higher-pitched series of five toots.

Status

The IUCN has assessed the Costa Rican pygmy owl as being of

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. Th ...

. Though its population size is not known, it is believed to be stable. No specific threats have been identified. It is considered rare in Panama and rare to locally fairly common in Costa Rica. "Human activity has little short-term direct effect on heCosta Rican Pygmy-Owl, other than the local effects of habitat destruction."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q869331 Costa Rican pygmy owl Birds of the Talamancan montane forests Costa Rican pygmy owl Taxonomy articles created by Polbot