Spectacled Owl
The Spectacled Owl is a distinctive large owl that lives from southern Mexico into parts of South America. It is a beautiful large owl with a brown head and back, white face and underparts and large yellow eyes.
Spectacled Owls prefer tropical rainforest habitat. They feed on mammals including small rodents, opossums, and skunks. They also take smaller prey items like large insects and crabs.
The population trend for the Spectacled Owl is considered to be stable and the conservation status as of October 2014 is Least Concern.
Details & Statistics
- Least Concern (LC)
- Near Threatened (NT)
- Vulnerable (VU)
- Endangered (EN)
- Critically Endangered (CR)
- Extinct in the Wild (EW)
- Extinct (EX)
Conservation
The Spectacled Owl is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2012 by BirdLife International. This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). Despite the fact that the population trend appears to be decreasing, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is very large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
International Names
