The northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus)

The northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus)

 

 

Male_Northern_Saw-whet_Owl

 

The northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) is a species of small owl in the family Strigidae. The species is native to North America. Saw-whet owls of the genus Aegolius are some of the smallest owl species in North America. They can be found in dense thickets, often at eye level, although they can also be found some 20 ft (6.1 m) up. Saw-whets are often in danger of being preyed upon by larger birds of prey. The northern saw-whet owl is a migratory bird without any strict pattern.

 

Northern saw-whet owl in Ontario, Canada

 

 

Taxonomy

The northern saw-whet owl was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other owls in the genus Strix and coined the binomial name Strix acadicus. Gmelin based his description on the "Acadian owl" from Nova Scotia that had been described and illustrated in 1781 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work A General Synopsis of Birds. The northern saw-whet owl is now one of five species placed in the genus Aegolius that was introduced in 1829 by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup. The genus name is Latin for a screech owl, the word came from the Ancient Greek aigōlios meaning "a bird of ill omen". The specific epithet acadicus is from "Acadia", the name of a former French colony in Nova Scotia.

 

Two subspecies are recognised:

• A. a. acadicus (Gmelin, JF, 1788) – south Alaska, Canada, north, southwest USA and north Mexico
• A. a. brooksi (Fleming, JH, 1916) – Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) (off British Columbia, Canada)