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Rare encounter with stygian owl

Stygian owl

By ROBERT GALLARDO
Special to Honduras This Week

It has been a relatively "easy" task to record more than 20 new butterflies for Honduras that pertain to the sulfur, swallowtail and brush-footed families due to the fact that so little collecting has been done here. Some of the rarest species for all of Central and South America turn up throughout various forested regions in the country.

What has been more difficult is finding new species of birds for the country, but two recent trips to La Mosquitia have done just that. The first was a south polar skua (Catharacta maccormicki), which is typically a pelagic (ocean going) bird, but one was seen close to shore near the mouth of Rio Platano to identify it positively. It was harassing some terns trying to get them to drop their recently caught fish, which is a typical habit for skuas.

The second bird was even more of a surprise. A local guide, Eddy Bodden, a tourist, and I were hiking around in the savanna on the south side of Ibans Lagoon when Eddy spotted something up in a pine tree. He said, "Es un buho" (It's an owl). Through the binoculars we got to see the stygian owl (Asio stygius).

Some American ornithologists recently found one in the La Ceiba area that a local campesino had shot and killed, which constitutes the first country record and our find is the first sighting of a live bird.

The stygian owl is typically a highland species within its range, but our sighting was at sea level. It is rare to encounter any owls in the daytime and finding this one really made the whole trip worthwhile. As more people really start to take a look at Honduras' flora and fauna more, new and interesting things will show up.

Robert Gallardo is a naturalist and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras.