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Scops owls are typical owls in family Strigidae belonging to the genus Otus and are restricted to the Old World. Otus is the largest genus of owls with 59 species.Scops owls are colored in various brownish hues, sometimes with a lighter underside and/or face, which helps to camouflage them against the bark of trees.
The Eurasian scops owl was formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.Linnaeus cited the 1599 description by the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, placed it with all the other owls in the genus Strix and coined the binomial name Strix scops.
The Mayotte scops owl has been considered to be conspecific with the Pemba scops owl (Otus pembaensis), the Anjouan scops owl (Otus capnodes), the rainforest scops owl and the Torotoroka scops owl (Otus madagascariensis under O. rutilus), but this species has now been split and the Mayotte scops owl is now regarded as its own species, mainly based on its very different call.
Otus senegalensis feae: Endemic to Annobón island in the Gulf of Guinea (regarded by Birdlife International as a separate species, the Annobón scops owl) [5] The African scops owl was formerly regarded as the African subspecies of the European scops owl. It was grouped with the Arabian scops owl, Socotra scops owl, and the Annobón scops owl ...
Giant scops owl: Otus gurneyi (Tweeddale, 1879) 108 White-fronted scops owl: Otus sagittatus (Cassin, 1849) 109 Reddish scops owl: Otus rufescens (Horsfield, 1821) 110 Serendib scops owl: Otus thilohoffmanni Warakagoda & Rasmussen, 2004: 111 Sandy scops owl: Otus icterorhynchus (Shelley, 1873) 112 Sokoke scops owl: Otus ireneae Ripley, 1966: ...
The taxonomy is in a state of flux but recent genetic studies have placed the Pemba scops owl closer to the clade containing the African scops owl Otus sengalensis, while the Mayotte scops owl is clearly separate from the remaining two.
The Pemba scops owl is a medium-sized scops-owl with short ear-tufts. There are two colour morphs, a brown morph which is mainly pale rufous-brown with light streaking on the head and faint barring on paler underparts and a rufous morph which is a bright, rich rufous, that is paler on the underwing coverts.
The Luzon scops owl is monotypic.Individuals of this species were previously thought to be part of Otus spilocephalus or O. scops, but proper classification by Joe T. Marshall in 1978 based on morphological features and vocalizations eventually earned it the species name Otus longicornis.