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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol. 124. No. 3. September 2012 
The diurnal activity of the Austral Pygmy Owl 
was recorded by (I) visual observations with 7 X 
50 binoculars and a 20-60X telescope, and (2) 
records of spontaneous calls (without playback, 
Martinez and Zuberogoitia 2002). We identified 
vocalizations following Banos (1949) and Good- 
all et al. (1951): discriminating between the 
contact pair call as a whistle with 6 to 7 notes/ 
sec described as huj-huj-huj-huj-huj-huj (Jimenez 
and Jaksic 1989) and a territorial call (incorrectly 
described as a hunting call by Goodall cl al. 1951) 
as a sharp trill described as truie-lruie-yi-yi. 
Observations were conducted from 6 March 
2009 (austral autumn) to 26 February 2010 
(austral summer), once a week from as early as 
0700 through 1900 hrs (mean ± SD daily 
observation time was 9.97 ± 0.32 hrs, n = 34) 
for 339 hrs of observation (112 in summer. 35 in 
autumn. 98 in winter, and 93 in spring) during 34 
field trips. 
OBSERVATIONS 
We obtained 31 records of daytime activity of 
the Austral Pygmy Owl of which 84% (n = 26) 
were acoustic and 16% (n = 5) were visual records. 
Acoustic Records .—Vocal activity was more 
frequent al mid-morning between 0900 and 1200 
hrs with a marked decline between 1300 and 1600 
hrs and a gradual increase toward the crepuscular 
hours (big. |). Daytime vocalizations were re¬ 
corded throughout the entire year of study with 
the contact pair call being the most commonly 
heard (54% of the records), slightly more than the 
territorial call (46%). The contact pair call was 
m TJl q r i i75%) com P arctJ to the territorial 
call (25 7c) in early spring (1 Aug to 20 Sep) and 
during the austral spring (Oct to Dec; 100%) 
when the territorial call was not recorded. The 
territorial call was heard more frequently in the 
austral summer (Jan to Mar: 75%) and austral 
autumn (Apr to Jun: 100%), when the contact pair 
call was not recorded. 
Visual Records .—Visual observations occurred 
in all seasons of the year (2 in winter, and I in 
each ot the other seasons), all between 0800 and 
1400 hrs. Individual Austral Pygmy Owls were 
observed perched and scanning in four of these 
records. We recorded an individual Austral 
Pygmy Owl stalking and attacking a White- 
crested Elaenia, which was ~3 m distant perched 
on a roble beech (Nothofagus obliqua) (height 15- 
20 m) only once (7 Mar 2009 at 1110 hrs); the owl 
was unsuccessful and returned to its original 
perch. I wo Tufted Tit-Tyrants ( Anairetes paru- 
hts) and one Striped Woodpecker (Veniliomis 
lignarius ) approached the owl from the rear at 
1121 hrs which continued watching them. The 
Striped Woodpecker flushed, uttering alert vocal¬ 
izations when the ow l approached to within ~2 m. 
chasing it and the two Tufted Tit-Tyrants. Thb 
owl flushed at 1125 hrs and perched on the edge 
of a road with human traffic, 
DISCUSSION 
Our results suggest the diurnal activity of the 
Austral Pygmy Owl varies during the day, similar to 
that reported for other raptors in the Strigidae (Negro 
et al. 1990, Sovern et al. 1994, Sun and Wang 1997). 
However, the owl's activity does not reach its 
maximum immediately after sunrise or before 
sunset, but during the mid-morning when most 
passerine birds are still active (Ralph et al. 1996). 
