Today I want to write about a cute little owl called the forest owlet.
Here are five interesting facts about them:
- These small birds of prey are only about 23 cm tall.
- They may be small, but their talons are very big, which helps them to catch prey bigger than them.
- Unlike most other owls, these guys hunt during the day. They mainly eat rodents, grasshoppers, lizards, birds, and frogs.
- Female forest owlets lay 2 eggs in a whole in a tree. They then feed them and protect them from males, even the dad, which have been known to attack and kill babies.
- For over 100 years, they were thought to be extinct until someone found a few of them in an Indian forest in 1997. There are probably less than 500 left in the wild, so they are considered critically endangered.
I hope that you found these facts interesting and learned something new.
Are there any other interesting facts that you would like to share about forest owlets?
Similar Species:
Forest Owlets belong to the order Strigiformes(Owls) and the family Strigidae(True Owls). 🙂