One of these very small owls showed up in my yard one January. Incommon in Nevada, they breed in scattered mountain ranges in conifer forest and riparian trees. They have nested in the Jarbridge Mountain, the Toiyabe Range, at Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada, and possibly the Spring Range in the south.
In he 1940s, ornithologist Alen Miller found Saw-whet owls nesting in the Pinyon forests of the Grapevine Mountains at 6,700 feet elevation, about 20 to 30 miles west of Oasis Valley (mostly in Inyo County, California) (Miller, 1946, Vertebrate inhabitants of the pinon association in the Death Valley Region. Ecology 27: 54-60).
In adjacent California, they breed in the Sierra and White Mountains, and wintering birds have been seen sporadically in lowlands of the Owens Valley and desert oases (Arnold Small, California Birds, Thier Status and Distribution, 1994, Ibis Publishing Co., Vista, California).
^The backside of the little owl.
HOME..........Oasis Valley Birds..........Oasis Valley Bird List
