The occurrence of owls in the Marshall Islands

Island biogeography and the assessment of the dispersal of avian species (cf. Diamond 1974) relies on reports of both sucessful and unsuccessful dispersal events. The latter are not easy to ascertain unless a bird has been observed or caught. Archival documents and older narratives often contain previously unrecognised observations of the presence of bird species (cf. Spennemann in press). Unfortunately such sources often suffer from a lack of detail thus not allowing to pin down the sighting to species level. On occasion, however, the data are detailed enough. There are very few avian raptors in the Pacific Islands, and of these owls are the most common. The aim of this note is to present the evidence for the occurrence of owls on the Marshall Islands drawing both on observations and linguistic data.