A small bird, the forest owlet lives in the dry, deciduous teak forests of Central India. It was first described in 1873 and last seen in the wild in 1884. It was actually thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered 113 years later in 1997 by American Ornithologists Ben King, Pamela Ramussen and David Abbott in the Nandurbar District of Maharashtra.
The scientific name of forest owlet is Athene Blewitti. It belongs to the Strigidae family of owls. It gets its name ‘blewitti’ after F.R. Blewitt, the collector of the first specimen obtained in December 1872 from eastern Madhya Pradesh. Blewitt sent it to Allan Octavian Hume who described it in 1873. The name A.O. Hume will take you back to your history textbook for, he was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress.
It is today listed as ‘Critically Endangered’ on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), which means it could soon become extinct.
It is now mostly seen the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Since 1999, various surveys have counted less than a 100 of these little birds.
The owlet is small and stocky, with a plain crown, banded wings and tail, a large skull and beak. The upper parts of the bird are dark grey-brown. The wings and tail are banded with white trailing edges. The facial disc is pale and the eyes are yellow. Males and females are similar, though males are said to be smaller than females with fewer markings. The bird is diurnal, unlike most of its nocturnal relatives, and can be seen on the bare branches of trees. Its diet comprises lizards, small rodents, young ones of other birds, frogs, caterpillars and grasshoppers.
The bird breeds between October and May, laying two eggs in a tree hollow. The young ones are looked after by their parents for a month and a half or so.
Habitat loss, predation and hunting are the main threats to the survival of this bird species.
Picture Credit : Google