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Little Owl

Athene noctua · Family Strigidae

Athene noctua

Family Strigidae

Order
Strigiformes
Family
Strigidae
GBIF occurrence records
660,750
Countries and territories with records
101
Little Owl
Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium · Athene noctua, Ambula, Montenegro 1.jpg · CC BY 2.0 · Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Recordings may be trimmed and re-encoded; photos are cropped and resized.
Play song · Klankbeeld · Little_owl,_steenuil.wav · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Klankbeeld · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Recordings may be trimmed and re-encoded; photos are cropped and resized.

About this species

This species has 660,750 occurrence records from 101 countries and territories (GBIF, 21 October 2026). Most records come from the Netherlands (26.8%), Spain (17.6%), France (16.9%), the United Kingdom (7.1%) and Belgium (6.2%); together they account for 74.6% of the total. In the Netherlands, this species accounts for 0.27% of all bird records in GBIF.

The scientific name Athene noctua combines the genus name Athene with the species epithet noctua. The Warbla app catalog lists 9 species of the genus Athene; apart from this one, those with the most GBIF records are Athene cunicularia, Athene brama and Athene superciliaris.

The catalog has GBIF record counts for 217 species of the family Strigidae. This species ranks 4th among them; the family’s most-recorded species is Bubo virginianus. Its record count is 12.6 times the family average (52,528). The family Strigidae belongs to the order Strigiformes, which has 233 species in the Warbla app catalog.

More birds in the family Strigidae

Credits & data sources