Spectacled Owl

Hanging on my wall at home, there is a photograph of a Spectacled Owl that I took while at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh (My sister is obsessed with owls so she she insisted that we put the picture up). Until I started researching the fauna of the Pantanal, I had no idea that the Spectacled Owl was from Brazil let alone the fact that I might get to see one in the wild over the summer.

As you can see from the video above, Spectacled Owls are rather gawky birds. Its range extends from Southern Mexico South to the Chilean Andes and east to the Atlantic coast of Brazil. It is commonly kept at zoos and aviaries (like where I saw one), but, in the wild, it is reclusive and rarely seen. However, it does have a distinctive pulsating, hooting call that differentiates it from most other species of owls in the area. In the Andes region, however, the Band-bellied Owl, a member of the same genus, has a very similar call. One can most easily distinguish between the species based on their location; the Band-bellied Owl prefers lower elevations in the Andes.

The Spectacled Owl is nocturnal. At night, it forages for small to medium-sized prey, which may include opossums, skunks, rabbits, and other smaller vertebrates that inhabit the lowland tropical forest the owl prefers.

Sources:
http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/portal/species/overview?p_p_spp=209656
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Pulsatrix_perspicillata/