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Mini-lechuzas! July 23, 2017

July 20, 2017

There are two general words for ‘owl’ in Spanish: búho and lechuza. As best as I can work out, búhos generally have ear tufts (think of a horned owl) while lechuzas generally don’t (think of a barn owl). At any rate, we saw two little owls of the lechuza variety today:

They turn out to have the disproportionately long English name of “ferruginous pygmy owl” and the slightly shorter Costa Rican common name of mochuelo. But since they’re the only pygmy owls at Palo Verde, I’ll probably just keep calling them mini-lechuzas. 🙂