I won! I won!
January 20, 2025



Yes! You are looking at the proud recipient of a Golden Owl Pellet. Did you see me on TV? I took home the award for Most Ferocious Owl at the North American Owl Awards for 2025.

Of course, I couldn't have done it without the help of my prey, so I was sure to recognize them in my acceptance speech, especially the songbirds and rodents and insects.

Hey, wait a minute, I think I may have forgotten to thank the reptiles and amphibians. I knew I was leaving someone out!

I was actually hoping that I would win for Smallest Canadian Owl. I would have been a shoo-in at just 7.1 inches in length.¹ But they were apparently not giving out an award for that category this year.

What's that, you say? There's always next year? Ha! I should live so long. I'm already 2 years old, you know, and my species only lives from 3 to 7 years in the wild, depending on whom you ask.

Well, we all can't be Great Horned Owls with 13-year lifespans, can we?²

Say, maybe if I let the Academy know about my short lifespan, they'll fast-track their recognition of Northern Pygmy Owls as Smallest Canadian Owl species.

Let's see, where is my Northern Pygmy Owl letterhead? Ah, here we are.

"Dear Akademy..."

Hmm. That doesn't look right. How many k's are there in "akademy"?


Listen to the North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Zimman Field at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts!


1: Northern Pygmy Owl, iNaturalist.ca
2: Great Horned Owl, Wikipedia

There's no place like nesting cavity
December 12, 2024



Come in, come in. Mi casa es su casa, or my woodpecker cavity is your woodpecker cavity. Shout out to the Northern Flicker, by the way, for excavating these digs in this Douglas fir, or is it an aspen tree¹? You'll have to forgive my vagueness on this topic, but 75% of our owl brains are devoted to sight and sound², which leaves me precious few neurons for mastering plant taxonomy.

But come in, relax. You've caught me at lunchtime, I'm afraid. I was just dining on California valley quail³. I typically only swallow the brains⁴, however, so feel free to go to work on the carcass proper. I draw your attention to the fact that this quail is longer than yours truly, even with the head torn off. My species is typically 7 inches in length⁵, while Callipepla californica here tops out at 11 inches or so⁶.

It's no wonder that nature writer Arthur C. Bent once called me "bloodthirsty and rapacious.⁷"

But please don't stand on ceremony. Lay to. Let me give you some cricket carcasses as well. There might even be one from which I have not already extracted the juicy abdomen⁸. Yummy, right? Of course, today's menu is special. My staple summertime diet consists of songbirds⁹, which is surprising when you think about it. I myself am no larger than a sparrow¹⁰, after all! And yet juncos, warblers and titmice¹¹ are all fair game for Glaucidium californicum¹².

What? A body's got to live, hasn't it? Besides, those passerines give as good as they get. Do you know that songbirds mob me mercilessly? They take turns dive-bombing my head, meanwhile sending up a racket that blows my cover for miles around and forces me to move on. Nor are these songbirds just screeching. They actually have their own private mobbing language that is understood across species¹³.

Researcher Erick Greene could have been writing about us Northern Pygmy Owls when he described the problems that such mobbing causes for hawks:

“You’re hunting and fly­ing around," quoth Erick, "trying to find your dinner, and yet there’s this bow wave of infor­mation that travels out in front of you faster than you can ever fly.¹⁴”

Come on, eat up. It's not like that cricket is going to eat ITSELF, you know.

Of course, the worst offenders when it comes to mobbing are probably the black-capped chickadees and the red-breasted nuthatches¹⁵. They are the chicken littles who are most likely to work the local songbirds up into a lather about my presence in the neighborhood. The indignant bandwagon that those two set rolling, however, is quickly joined by a long roster of other birdfeeder favorites, including juncos, titmice, sparrows, and jays. Fortunately, I have false eyes in the back of my head, so the cowardly creatures will at least refrain from blindsiding me from the rear¹⁶.

We also get a respite from these attacks in winter¹⁷. Of course, that's partly because my species tends to hunt more mammals in that season, and I guess the songbirds can sense that they are not currently on the menu¹⁸. Who needs a scrawny titmouse when you're dining on voles, squirrels and gophers: you know, meals that you can really sink your beak into. But I also hear that mobbing uses up plenty of songbird energy, which in cold weather could no doubt be far more sensibly devoted to finding food and protecting offspring¹⁹. In other words, if songbirds refrain from bothering us in winter, it is certainly not in order to give us Northern Pygmy Owls a break.

But where are you going? I have not yet shown you this species habitat map that I have posted on the wall here. Look at that. We Northern Pygmies are found throughout most of the Pacific Northwest, as far east as central Colorado, and from Mexico all the way to the northern half of British Columbia²⁰. Nor are we a migratory species²¹. This map represents full-time residents, thank you very much, not finicky wanderers like the Elf Owl or the Flammulated Owl²².

But just because we Northern Pygmies are far-flung does not mean that we are particularly common. Indeed, there are only 80,000 to 180,000 of us worldwide²³. That may sound like a lot, but you've got to remember that there are at least 2 million Barn Owls worldwide²⁴ and the estimated population of the Great Horned Owl in North America alone is close to four million²⁵.

Don't go! There's so much more to tell you about the Northern Pygmy Owl! Well then, at least bookmark my blog page, for goodness' sake. Honestly.

And would you look at this: you have hardly TOUCHED that cricket!

Editor's Note:

Not a bad blog entry given the limited brain that Sid has to work with. I would only add two important points:

1) The Northern Pygmy Owl is diurnal, unlike most owls. Diurnal means that it is active during the day rather than at night²⁶.

2) Unlike most owls, the Northern Pygmy Owl does not fly silently. Its wings make a kind of buzzing noise instead²⁷.


1: Northern Pygmy-Owl Research, CARRI: Colorado Avian Research and Rehabilitation Institute
2: How Smart Are Owls?, World Birds: Joy of Nature
3: Northern Pygmy Owl Predation on an Adult California Quail, Western Field Ornithologists
4: Northern Pygmy Owl, The Owl Pages
5: The Petite Predator: Guide to the Northern Pygmy Owl, Birds & Wetlands
6: California Quail, BirdBot
7: Tiny Terror of the Skies, National Wildlife Foundation
8: Northern Pygmy Owl, The Owl Pages
9: Songbird species team up to , Popular Science
10: Northern Pygmy-Owl, Cornell Lab: All About Birds
11: Northern Pygmy-Owl Research, CARRI: Colorado Avian Research and Rehabilitation Institute
12: Northern Pygmy Owl, The Owl Pages
13: Look out! The Backyard Bird Alarm Call Network, Cornell Lab: All About Birds
14: Look out! The Backyard Bird Alarm Call Network, Cornell Lab: All About Birds
15: Tiny Terror of the Skies, National Wildlife Foundation
16: Pygmy-Owls' False Eyes, Bird Note
17: Songbird species work together to mob predator owls, but only strike when the time is right, EurekAlert
18: Mobbing behavior of songbirds in response to calls of an ambush-predator, the Northern Pygmy-Owl, Frontiers
19: Songbird species work together to mob predator owls, but only strike when the time is right, EurekAlert
20: Northern Pygmy-Owl Range, birds-of-north-america.net
21: The Northern Pygmy Owl, Nature Canada
22: Owl In Utah: 14 Species That Are Common Residents Of This State, Wild Bird Scoop
23: Discover 13 Types of Owls in Arizona (From Rarest to Most Common), AZ Animals
24: Barn Owl, American Bird Conservancy
25: Great Horned Owl, American Bird Conservancy
26: Northern Pygmy-owl, The Peregrine Fund
27: Northern Pygmy-owl, The Peregrine Fund