Santa Marta Screech Owl

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Santa Marta Screech Owl
Megascops gilesi (12763060445) .jpg

Santa Marta Screech Owl ( Megascops gilesi )

Systematics
Class : Birds (aves)
Order : Owls (Strigiformes)
Family : Real owls (Strigidae)
Genre : Screech owls ( megascops )
Type : Santa Marta Screech Owl
Scientific name
Megascops gilesi
Crab , 2017

The Santa Marta screech owl ( Megascops gilesi ) is a species of owl from the genus of the screech owls ( Megascops ). It is in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia endemic . The species epithet honors Robert Giles, who financially supported the establishment of a bird sanctuary near the type locality of the new owl species.

Discovery story

It took 98 years from discovery to first scientific description . Melbourne Armstrong Carriker collected a screech owl in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia in 1919, which he believed to be a new species. He sent the bird to Walter Edmond Clyde Todd of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh , who passed the hide to Waldron DeWitt Miller of the American Museum of Natural History in New York for comparison with samples from other screech owl species. There, too, the species could not be clearly assigned. Todd mentioned the bird in 1922 as Otus choliba subsp. with the remark that it could very well be a new species, but that more material is needed for a formal description. The first voice recording was made in 1994 by Peter Boesman and Paul Coopmans , another in February 2007 by Niels Krabbe . The DNA of a specimen that was collected in the same year but has since been destroyed by insect damage showed that the apparently still unknown species also deviates genetically from most clades of the genus Megascops . The smallest genetic distance (based on gene sequences of cytochrome b ) is 5.8% to the Peruvian screech owl ( Megascops roboratus ) from southwest Ecuador and northwest Peru . Photos of the bird collected in 2007 also showed great resemblance to the bellows from 1919. A comparison of this bird with the extensive collection of South American screech owls in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago confirmed the status of the Santa Marta screech owl as a separate species, which is emphasized by the different chants and the genetic distance to other species. Niels Krabbe finally published the first scientific description in 2017 and named the new species Megascops gilesi .

features

The medium-sized Santa Marta screech owl reaches a body length of approximately 30 cm. The ear tufts are short but visible. The eyes are yellow. The face veil is framed by a relatively inconspicuous, narrow, dark brown border. The crown and back show straight and wide dark horizontal stripes. A light, half-covered neck patch is set off from the back by a contrasting dark band. The feathers on the underside have a few narrow, blackish shaft lines that are distributed evenly and far apart on the belly and contrast with light brown herringbone patterns. The belly is white. The tarsi are feathered golden brown, the toes bare, the beak blue with a light-colored tip and the flesh of the toes bluish. There are two color morphs , a cinnamon gray or reddish brown and an intermediate morph of both colors.

Distribution, habitat and way of life

The Santa Marta screech owl lives in the rainforest at altitudes between 1800 and 2500 m on the San Lorenzo Ridge in the northwest of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Likely, the species could also be found in suitable habitats throughout the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, possibly to altitudes above 2500 m, but further field studies are needed to confirm this distribution. The Santa Marta screech owl way of life has not been adequately researched. Large beetles are part of the food supply.

Vocalizations

Of similar and sympatric occurring Choliba Screech Owl ( Megascops choliba ), the Santa Marta Screech differs mainly by their vocalizations. The singing consists of relatively short staccato tones lasting 2.6 to 3 seconds that sound like úúúúú… úú . The series of notes begins quietly, then increases in volume and ends abruptly. The loudest chants of the males reach a frequency of 874  Hz , those of the females 1172 Hz.

Hazard and protection

The IUCN added the Santa Marta Screech Owl to the Red List of Endangered Birds in 2019 and classified the species as "endangered" ( vulnerable ). The population is estimated at 2300 to 7500 adult birds. It occurs only in a small area in which the area and the quality of its habitat decrease. The main threat to the species is considered to be habitat loss through deforestation . The forests of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta have been severely cut down or destroyed by slash and burn since the 1950s . About 85% of the original forest cover has disappeared. The forests are mainly replaced by non-native tree plantations (mainly pine and eucalyptus trees ) or by pasture land .

literature

  • Claus König , Friedhelm Weick : Owls of the World. Christopher Helm , London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7136-6548-2 , p. 489 (as Megascops sp. ).
  • Heimo Mikkola: Owls of the World - A Photographic Guide. 2nd edition, Christopher Helm, London, 2013, ISBN 978-1-47290-593-2 , p. 230 (as Megascops 'gilesi' ).
  • Niels Krabbe: A new species of Megascops (Strigidae) from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, with notes on voices of New World screech-owls. Ornitología Colombiana 16, 2017, eA08–1
  • David Brewer: Birds new to Science. Fifty Years of Avian Discoveries. Christopher Helm, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-4729-0628-1 , p. 342 (as Megascops sp. ).
  • Jochen Martens, Norbert Bahr: Documentation of new bird taxa, 13 - report for 2017. In: Vogelwarte 57, November 2019, pp. 151–171.

Web links

Commons : Megascops gilesi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen Martens, Norbert Bahr: Documentation of new bird taxa, 13 - report for 2017 In: Vogelwarte 57, November 2019, pp. 151–171
  2. ↑ WE Todd, MA Carricker: The birds of the Santa Marta region of Colombia: a study in altitudinal distribution. Annals of the Carnegie Museum 14, 1922, p. 216
  3. ↑ Sidnei M. Dantas, Jason D. Weckstein, John Bates, Niels K. Krabbe, Carlos Daniel Cadena, Mark B. Robbins, Eugenio Valderrama, Alexandre Aleixo : Molecular systematics of the new world screech-owls (Megascops: Aves, Strigidae) : Biogeographic and taxonomic implications In: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 94, 2016, pp. 626-634. doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2015.09.025
  4. ↑ Niels Krabbe: A new species of Megascops (Strigidae) from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, with notes on voices of New World screech-owls. Ornitología Colombiana 16, 2017, eA08–1