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Spectacled Owl | Pulsatrix perspicillata
Briluil | Búho de anteojos
The Spectacled Owl is a large, powerful forest owl without ear tufts, named for the white spectacles around its yellow eyes. It occurs from southern Mexico to northern Argentina and is the largest owl of tropical lowland forest in the guide area. It is active at night and lives in tall forest, but also hunts along forest edges and in semi-open country.
Voice
The song is a series of low, knocking notes that accelerate and fade away, poop-poop-poo-po-po-po, like a sheet of corrugated iron being shaken. The female calls with a hawk-like scream, ker-wheeer; young beg with a hoarse, high kyew. Heard most on still nights.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
41–52 cm, large and heavy, with a round head without ear tufts. Head, upperparts and a broad breast band are dark chocolate brown. White eyebrows and white stripes beside the bill together form spectacles around the yellow eyes; the throat is white. The belly is plain whitish to buff. Females are larger than males. Young birds are almost entirely white or cream with a dark chocolate-brown facial mask and keep this plumage for a long time.
Confusion species
The Crested Owl Lophostrix cristata is smaller and has long white ear tufts and finely vermiculated underparts without a dark breast band. The Mottled Owl Strix virgata is much smaller, has dark eyes and a streaked belly. The Black-and-white Owl Strix nigrolineata has a black face and finely black-and-white barred underparts. A white juvenile may recall an American Barn Owl Tyto furcata, but the dark face with yellow eyes is diagnostic.
Habitat
Tall rainforest and humid forest of the lowlands and foothills, also dry deciduous forest with tall trees, gallery forest, older secondary forest, forest edges and plantations with shade trees; from sea level to about 1500 m. It hunts from a perch for nocturnal mammals such as rodents, opossums and bats, and also for birds, frogs, crabs and large insects. It nests in large tree cavities and lays one or two eggs; the young remain dependent on their parents for a long time.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Resident from southern Mexico, in southern Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Tabasco, through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama, on both the Caribbean and Pacific sides. In Costa Rica it also occurs in the dry forest of Guanacaste. Outside the guide area in South America to northern Argentina and on Trinidad.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Costa Rica and Panama day roosts in lowland forest are often known to local guides. At night its knocking song reveals it in undisturbed forest; a white juvenile is more conspicuous in the canopy than the adults.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In much of Central America it depends on larger forest tracts and is therefore sensitive to deforestation, but it also tolerates some disturbance and locally occurs in secondary forest and forest edges.
Scientific name
Pulsatrix perspicillata | (Latham, 1790)
Latham described the species in 1790 as Strix perspicillata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pulsatrix was introduced in 1848 by Kaup. Pulsatrix is New Latin for 'female attacker' (from pulsator 'attacker, striker'), taken from the species name Strix pulsatrix. perspicillata is New Latin for 'spectacled' (from perspicillum 'spectacles'), after the white spectacle-like markings around the eyes. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.