Tropical Screech-Owl

The tropical screech owl is polymorphic, with much variation in color. It is overall gray-brown or (less commonly) brown or rufous, but always with a relatively distinctive blackish edge to the face and yellow irides. Its undersides are pale with a black "herringbone" pattern. The subspecies differ in the intensity of the colors and the amount of black markings on the upper- and underparts. Adults are 21 to 23 cm (8.3 to 9.1 in) long and weigh 97 to 160 g (3.4 to 5.6 oz).

The tropical screech owl is "the most common and widespread screech-owl of the neotropics." It is found from Costa Rica and Panama south and throughout South America (including Trinidad and Tobago), almost entirely east of the Andes, but not in the far south. The subspecies are distributed thus:

M. c. choliba, southern Mato Grosso and São Paulo, Brazil, south to eastern Paraguay M. c. luctisomus, the Pacific slope in Costa Rica south to the Canal Zone in Panama, and on the Pearl Islands M. c. margaritae, restricted to Margarita Island off of northern Venezuela M. c. cruciger, Trinidad, and eastern Colombia and Venezuela east to the Guianas and south to eastern Peru M. c. duidae, Cerro Duida and Cerro de la Neblina in southern Venezuela M. c. decussatus, central and southern Brazil M. c. uruguaii, southeastern Brazil, northeastern Argentina, and Uruguay M. c. surutus, Bolivia M. c. wetmorei, Paraguay and Argentina The tropical screech owl inhabits a wide variety of landscapes. Most tend to be partially to mostly open, such as secondary forest, open woodland, coffee plantations, residential areas, and the borders of terra firme and várzea forests. Except for M. c. duidae, it shuns the interior of forests; that subspecies is found in dense forest and bamboo scrub.

The tropical screech owl is nocturnal. It forages by sallying from a low perch to capture prey on the ground, from branches, or in the air. Its diet is large arthropods and small vertebrates. The former include earthworms, scorpions, spiders, harvestmen, and a large variety of insects (such as grasshoppers, katydids, moths and caterpillars, ants, cockroaches, cicadas, termites, mantids, crickets, and beetles). Vertebrate prey includes small frogs, other amphibians, small reptiles (such as snakes), other birds, opossums, bats, and rodents.