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Spotted owlet

This is a small greyish brown owl with white spots. It has a flat face and large round eyes. Because of this the owl has accurate sense of distance and dept of vision. This binocular vision has exceptional importance because the owl needs to catch live prey. The field of vision of owl is so much wider than that of any other bird. The owl can swiftly turn its head to see side ways or even at the back. Spotted owlets are mainly seen in villages, farms, old trees, in gardens near river beds and also in forest on hills. They live in pairs or small groups of 7 or 8. They feed on grasshoppers, beetles, lizards, rats and mice. Thus spotted owlets help farmers indirectly. The breeding season is between November and April. We can come across a pair of sleepy spotted owlets dozing away in the hollow of a banyan tree during the day. Else they may sit very close to each other on a branch. If they realize that we have seen them, they actually do sit ups on a branch and watch us warily with their huge round eyes a comic sight indeed. Unlike most birds owls have forward facing eyes on a flat face. This is mainly because their eyes are encircled by stiff feathers giving the appearance of facial disc. The juvenile lacks spotting on the crown and the markings on the underpart are indistinct or streaked it prefers habitat with open wood area or even old buildings the call is it makes a manic churew call that be heard during day also.