Check List 19(6): 863-868, doi: 10.15560/19.6.863
New overwintering location of Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Molina, 1782) (Strigidae) in Tennessee, USA, with diet assessed through pellets
expand article infoScott A. Rush‡, Adrián Naveda-Rodríguez‡, Elizabeth B. Hamrick§
‡ Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, United States of America§ Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, United States of America

Corresponding author: Scott A. Rush ( scott.rush@msstate.edu )

Academic editor: Krizler Tanalgo
© Scott A. Rush, Adrián Naveda-Rodríguez, Elizabeth B. Hamrick.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Rush SA, Naveda-Rodríguez A, Hamrick EB (2023) New overwintering location of Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Molina, 1782) (Strigidae) in Tennessee, USA, with diet assessed through pellets. Check List 19(6): 863-868. https://doi.org/10.15560/19.6.863
Open Access
Abstract
Reporting new occurrence records of organisms is key to overcome the Wallacean shortfall. Here, we report the first sighting of a Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia (Molina, 1782), overwintering on a peninsula in the Tennessee River in Tennessee, USA, during boreal winters 2020–2022. Pellets from this bird showed combination of six species. This is the first record for the species in the Interior Plateau of the USA. Conditions supporting this bird and evidence of it overwintering bear to explore the environmental conditions that support this species in novel areas.
Keywords
Bird, insect, omnivore, North America, small mammal prey