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The Eurasian pygmy owl is usually red-tinged to a greyish-brown with dots on its back. The tail is generally darker than the body with five narrow, whitish bars. It has a small, short head with white to grey eyebrows and yellow eyes. It lacks the ear tufts that many other owls have. There is a white half-collar on the back of the neck.
Tawny owls do not take birds as commonly as mammals. Unlike the unrelated lineages of diurnal birds of prey, owls in general seldom prefer avian prey, with most varieties preferring small mammals and/or insects, except on a local basis (the closest to a specialized hunter of other birds are some in the pygmy owl genus).
The birds wait on a high perch at night and swoop down on prey. They mainly eat small organisms with a strong focus on small mammals in their diet. Swengel and Swengel (1992) reviewed ten studies that found northern saw-whet owls eating almost exclusively mammals (88% to 100%), with most of the mammals being rodents (85% to 99+%).
This species can adapt to surprisingly small prey where it is the only kind available and to large prey where it is abundant. Eurasian eagle-owls feed most commonly on small mammals weighing 100 g (0.22 lb) or more, although nearly 45% of the prey species recorded have an average adult body mass of less than 100 g (3.5 oz).
The Asian barred owlet is a small owl that sits at 22–25 cm (8.7–9.8 in). [3] The males weigh 150–176 g (0.331–0.388 lb) and the females up to 240 g (0.53 lb). [4] Like most owls in the True owl family, the females are usually larger than the males. [5] They are dark brown or olive-brown with a white throat patch and are densely barred. [5]
The report showed that the owls feed almost entirely on insects, other invertebrates and small mammals and thus posed little threat to game birds. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] There is evidence that from the 19th century little owls were occasionally kept as ornamental birds.
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Its food consists mainly of rodents, especially voles, but it will eat other small mammals such as rabbits, [17] mice, ground squirrels, shrews, rats, bats, muskrats and moles. It will also occasionally depredate smaller birds, especially when near sea-coasts and adjacent wetlands at which time they attack shorebirds , terns and small gulls and ...