NORTHERN PYGMY-OWL

Saratago, California, September 2024

This was an amazing wildlife encounter for me as I was hiking through Saratoga Quarry Park. It was my first time seeing this owl and it was much smaller than I had imagined. I would have completely missed the owl, that was stealthily perched in an oak, if it hadn’t been for the raucous alarms raised by the birds in the vicinity. It was hard to spot even after the alarm was raised. A Chestnut-backed Chickadee first raised the alarm alerting several other birds in the area. Three Anna’s Hummingbirds arrived on the spot in a short order of time and as always were more aggressive and were willing to approach the owl closely. This was then followed by two Oregon Dark-eyed Juncos who gave a consistent non-stop series of chips that must have lasted for minutes. This in turn brought a Nuttall’s Woodpecker flying from quite a distance to the scene. It first landed on a nearby naked pine branch and then quickly located where the owl was. It came to a neighboring branch on the oak and made several head bobbing movements to scare the owl away. In all this kerfuffle, I heard a White-breasted Nuthatch as well. This is when I realized that all this noise must be to chase some predator away and that is when I spotted the owl. However, the woodpecker and the other birds maintained a healthy distance all the time during this onslaught. The owl remained completely unmoved. Steadily, the mob started slowly frittering away and more calm returned to the scene with only the Anna’s Hummingbirds coming in to occasionally check in on the owl. And I found this quote to match this experience from Birds Of The World website.

"When a pygmy-owl is discovered all the small birds of the neighborhood band together and do their combined best to make his life miserable. They curse and revile him, but do not dare to strike...". C. W. Michael (1927)*

(*from Skinner, M. P. (1938). Rocky Mountain Pygmy-Owl, California Pygmy-Owl, Coast Pygmy-Owl, and Vancouver Pygmy-Owl. In Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey, Part Two (A. C. Bent, Editor). Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. pp. 401–434.)