Historical Specimens of Boreal Owls from Montana

Abstract

For most of the 20th century, the North American breeding range of the Boreal Owl (Aegolius funereus) was thought to be confined to Canada and Alaska (AOU 1957). Breeding was first suspected south of Canada in the summer of 1963, when Baldwin and Koplin (1966) found 2 recently fledged juveniles in Colorado. We now know that Boreal Owls are relatively common permanent residents in high-elevation coniferous forests of the western US from the Canadian border south to northern New Mexico (Hayward and others 1987; Stahlecker and Duncan 1996). To further clarify Boreal Owl distribution in the northern Rockies, Holt and others (1987) published what they believed was the 2nd confirmed specimen record from Montana, an adult female found dead along Camas Creek in Glacier National Park on 28 February 1986. Holt and others (1987) also reported that the first extant Montana specimen was a road kill salvaged near Bozeman in September 1964. They did not mention a specimen taken near Columbia Falls, Montana, in 1902 (Saunders 1921). Holt and Ermatinger (1989) subsequently listed the 1902 record in their summary of Boreal Owl occurrences in Montana, but they neglected to report that the record was a specimen. To my knowledge, the only explicit mention of the 1902 specimen since the species was found nesting south of Canada was by Kuchel and Garrott (1975: 21), who stated that ‘‘the specimen is not now known to exist.’’ The specimen in question was a male taken at Columbia Falls by ES Bryant on 9 December 1902 and placed in the personal collection of Louis B Bishop (Saunders 1921: 69). While examining the bird collection at the Field Museum of Natural History, I found the Bryant specimen (FMNH 138321). Moreover, at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, I found an earlier Boreal Owl specimen from Montana that has completely escaped notice in the literature: a male collected by Robert S Williams along the Missouri River near Great Falls on 23 September 1889 (MCZ 186684). This bird is by far the oldest Boreal Owl specimen from Montana and is among the oldest ever taken in a Rocky Mountain state. Accordingly, the purported 2nd Montana specimen of Holt and others (1987) was at least the 4th such specimen, and the 1st specimen known for the state was obtained in 1889, not 1964.