The Diet of the Little Owl (Athene noctua) in the Desert Habitats of Northwestern China
2008
Shao, Mingqin | Liu, Naifa
The Little Owl (Athene noctua) is a small representative of the Strigiformes and is distributed from Eurasia, northeastern Africa, Arabia, south to Iran and Kashmir. In China, this owl occurs north of the Changjiang River, on the Qinhai-Xizang plateau and in Xinjiang (Vaurie 1965, Zheng et al. 1999). The diets of Little Owls have been surveyed in a variety of habitats including alpine meadows (Yin 1964, Zheng et al. 1999, Xie et al. 2001), villages, and agricultural lands (Lei 1994, Luminita and Dumitru 2000, Mauro et al. 2001, Hounsome et al. 2004), wetlands (Christian et al. 2002, Vassilis and Haralambos 2003), and in arid zones (Al-Melhim et al. 1997, Ma et al. 1999, Navarro et al. 2003, Obuch and Kristin 2004). However, no comprehensive data on the diets of Little Owls in China have been published. The purpose of this report is to present the quantitative information on the diets of the owls from desert habitats in northwestern China, discuss the geographic variation in the diets, and report patterns of small mammal occurrence in the diets.
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