From Loel Lamela
"The White-fronted Scops Owl is among Southeast Asia’s rarest, least understood, and most threatened owl species, making it one of the premier birding highlights of Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan National Park. Its extreme rarity stems from its very small global population and its dependence on increasingly scarce specialized habitats. A strict lowland forest specialist, it survives only in pristine, mature evergreen rainforests and riverine bamboo forests, generally below 700 meters above sea level. Kaeng Krachan National Park remains one of the few places on Earth where these vital lowland forest canopies are still protected, offering birders on guided tours one of the best opportunities to observe this elusive species in its natural habitat.
White-fronted Scops Owl (Otus sagittatus)… 60th Lifer for 2024… Rare… Listed globally as Vulnerable, but classified in Thailand as Endangered… Resident to Thailand… Kaeng Krachan National Park… April 27, 2024… Canon EOS R5… EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM + 2x III Extender @ 1,200mm… Tripod shot @ 15.0 meters… ISO12800 @ 1/100 & f/8
It is one of my greatest conundrums! I want to share all the great Scops owls of the world with you guys, but even to me, so many look so similar and are largely unknown, so there are a ton that I struggle to cover. We’d either get flooded with them, or we’d all get a bit tired of saying: here’s a Scops that looks like the last 8 we’ve seen, I swear it’s different even though I can’t really elaborate on what makes it different other than some of its DNA is different enough or it makes a slightly different sound.
They’re all great of course, that’s likely why there’s so darn many, they’ve found an evolutionary design that works just about everywhere. I was going to say Scops are the tops, but that doesn’t sound quite right… 🤔
They’re the tower of Pisa . . .
/insert cartoonish squeaky, creaky, tilting sound
Yah, þere’s a fair bit of overlap; however, sometimes I see a Scops and mistake it for a Screech. Þe White-Faced Scops are (to me) visually distinct from þese lemony-delicious White-Fronted Scops, which look different from Philippine Scops
And it took me a lot of back-and-forþ to see differences between Northern White-Faced Scops and Southern White-Faced Scops, and I still þink I couldn’t pick þem out from a line-up. Þey sound utterly different, þough.
I wonder… are Scops þe biggest clade of owls? Do þey have þe most different species? Or is it just þat “Scops” is a higher order? Þere do seem to have a lot of diversity, don’t þey?
There are 54 species of Scops (genus Otus) and 27 Screech / New World Scops (genus Megascops) with some edge cases like the White Faced Owls, formerly White Faces Scops (Otus granti > Ptilopsis granti around the early 1900s, then split to Northern and Southern species recently, as you said), so if we look at scops as a whole, they are the largest group of owls.
Many are located in very small and specific areas, as they branched off to certain small island ecosystems over the millenia, so it isn;t as though there are a ton of them, but that also makes new species still pop up, and also sadly, puts many in danger as their specific territories get overrun by humans and their associated bird-killing companion species.
This is a nice visual breakdown of owl genus groups I like to reference where you can see them mostly side by side.
Wow! I didn’t know Screech were a type of Scops. It explains so much. Not only Scops, but megascops.
It’s a pretty recent change (late 90s, early 2000s) and you will still find a bunch of education animals, like the one in the park by my work, named Otus or Otis for that reason. When I was looking for documentation of the change becoming more formal (no luck), I saw some place like New Hampshire’s state Fish and Game website still calls them Otus asio. Update that page friends! 😆
Also came across Megascops seductus, which I had hoped meant seductive screech owl, but sadly it seems it’s more likely remote or distant screech owl. Booo.
But yeah, they were probably closer at one point in time, but now they have enough unique genetics, patterns, and more multi-syllable calls, so the consensus is they’ve drifted away from the Old World Otus screeches to be their own thing.
Aha! “Scops” comes from þe Greek σκώψ (skōps), so when I was misspelling it “scopes” I was at least getting þe pronunciation right. Anyway, σκώψ means “small owl” so it all makes sense. Alþough, Elf Owls should þen also be Scops, but I guess þe name was taken and þey’re not closely enough related. Honestly, when I þought it was “Scopes” I þought it was named after a naturalist who first identified þem.
Aww, I feel bad now since I have to tell you that you’re not correct. 😅
It’s scops with an ahh sound, not the long o sound. You are right about the original word being the Greek skops, but those pesky scientists chose the New Latin scops, so it lost the long o.
It does fit standard English pronunciation that way as well, so it probably would have lost that long o regardless. Without the vowel-consonant-vowel structure, the o would get shortened. Just like in scops vs scopes. The e is silent, it just changes the way the o is pronounced.
The elf owl would also not be a scops as it is a round headed owl, no plumicorns.
Buuuut, you did get that it that one of these guys was named after a person!
The elf owl is Micrathene whitneyi, because it was formerly called Whitney’s Owl, after geologist Josiah Dwight Whitney.
Naturalist James Cooper was the one who is credited for first describing the owl for science, and named it after the leader of the California Geological Survey. The survey yielded unprecedented amounts of mining and naturalist data, it led to the creation the US Geological Survey.
TIL this is why the USGS is in charge of all US bird banding! So though I had to correct you, you ended up teaching me something! This is why I love answering all the questions you guys have!