Have you met eastern screech owls, Scops and Ziggy?
Eastern screech owls (Megascops asio), Scops and Ziggy, two of Ruffner’s Animal Ambassadors.
On weekends, you may find either of the two little owls hanging out with Wildlife Care Naturalist, Emily Hutto, as she leads educational programs and cares for all of our animal ambassadors. Eastern screech owls (Megascops asio) come in two colors, gray and rufous (reddish brown). Scops is a gray morph, and Ziggy is rufous morph.
In the pictures, Ziggy and Scops demonstrate their amazing camouflage qualities, and you can see for yourself how each color helps them to blend in — colors, along with feather patterns and dark vertical streaking — Scops perfectly matches the oak bark, while Ziggy more closely matches the pine. Both rufous and gray morphs occur across the range for eastern screech owls, and both can be found in Alabama because of our pine and hardwood mixed forests across the state. Rufous morphs occur more commonly where pine trees make up the majority of forest, while gray morphs are most likely to occur in hardwood forests.
Ruffner Wildlife Care Naturalist, Emily Hutto, with the gray eastern screech owl, Scops.