Anjouan Scops Owl

Appearance

The Anjouan scops owl occurs in chocolate and rufous colour phases and has very small ear-tufts compared to other scops owls. The former has fine buff bars on the head and neck, a dark brown face with fine streaks and brown underparts with very fine brown streaks and vermiculations. The latter has abdomen markings that contrasts more with the plumage.

Body length is 15 cm (5.9 in) and the wingspan is 45 cm (18 in).

Range and habitat

The Anjouan scops owl is found only on the island of Anjouan, where it occurs in the remaining fragments of native upland forest, degraded forest and plantations. The Anjouan scops owl is an owl endemic to the island of Anjouan in the Comoro Islands.

Bristol Conservation and The Science Foundation have conducted surveys on the island to determine how many owls remained in 2009.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

In crisis

It has an estimated population of 2,300 – 3,600 mature individuals as of 2017. Upon its rediscovery, it was classified as "Critically Endangered" because its range is restricted to such a small area, that is being rapidly deforested. It was downlisted to Endangered in 2017, after a study indicated that previous population estimates of 100 – 400 individuals were considerable underestimates.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Anjouan Scops Owl is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Anjouan Scops Owl, Wikidata item Q551513. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.