Google tricked me again. I usually get these posts ready either right before I go to bed or when I first get up in the morning, so I’m not always all with it. So this morning I was looking for the Washington owl, but I guess Google found some mention of Washington on a site from Oregon, and I found these great Screech Owl pics and I learned an interesting fact to share, but then it saw it was the wrong place. I won’t let that keep her from sharing though, it just have me a little extra work.

So this little fellow is Otis from Cascades Raptor Center in Oregon. Otis is also the name of the Screech Owl is saw the other day, and I see a number of other screechies named Otis, so I figured there was going to be something particular about this name.

Otis, 5 days old

The American screech owls, up until very recently were placed in the genus Otus, which I also see many times referred to as Otis.

Otis asio was the accepted scientific name for the US screech owls until the last few decades, when they were moved to Megascops.

Check out those baby legs

Debates about the classification of Otus vs Megascops have been going on since around 1850.

With more biological evidence found and studies done over the last century or so, enough Steve’s have been found that most scientists see then as a different group than the old world Otus scops owls.

Adult plumage finally grown in

Generic testing sites they may still have common ancestry with the Eurasian owls though.

More feet than anything else!

The Taxonomy section of the Screech Owl Wikipedia has a long write up on the history of the name change battles.