Endangered
Forest owlet
Athene blewitti
The forest owlet is endemic to the forests of central India.
Appearance
The upperparts are dark grey-brown. The upper breast is almost solid brown and the sides are barred with a white central wedge in the lower breast that is sometimes unmarked, especially in males. The wings and tail are banded with white trailing edges.
The forest owlet is small (23 cm) and stocky.
It is a member of the typical owl family Strigidae, and was first described in 1873.
Range and habitat
The forest owlet was recorded in central India, and until 1997 was known from just seven specimens in museums collected in northern Maharashtra, and south-east Madhya Pradesh or western Odisha. Searches in Gujarat had been futile until the species was rediscovered in November 1997 by a group of American ornithologists in the foothills of the Satpura Range, northeast of Bombay. The forest owlet was observed in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and at a few locations in Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The forest owlet typically hunts from perches where it sits still and waits for prey. When perched, it flicks its tail from side to side rapidly and more excitedly when it chases prey.
Lizards and skinks constitute nearly 60% of its prey, rodents 15%, birds 2% and the remainder invertebrates and frogs. When nesting, the male hunts and feeds the female at nest, and the female feeds the young.
In crisis
It is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2018, as the population is estimated at fewer than 1,000 mature individuals. It is threatened foremost by deforestation. As it was not sighted after 1884, it was considered extinct for many years.
In 2018, it was assessed as being Endangered, with a population estimate of about 250 mature individuals. It is threatened by loss and degradation of forests due to illegal logging, encroachment by humans, forest fires and construction of irrigation dams.
Forest owlet 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 Forest owlet, Wikidata item Q62566317. 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.
