As an update to the article in the January 2026 issue of this journal, about the species which visited a bird bath during 2025, we add this observation. A Mountain Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium gnoma, visited a bird bath in Hillsboro on January 4 of this year, bringing the “yard list” for that yard to 178. It was also seen in the yard the day before. This species is diurnal.
The taxonomic designation of the population found here is disputed. The IOU (International Ornithologists’ Union) considers this population a full species (see range map below by Simon Pierre Barrette via Wikipedia, it is shown here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license). In this treatment, the population found here is the Mountain Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium gnoma. The Northern Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium californicum, range is also shown below under the same license, according to the IOU.
Various sources (The American Ornithological Society [AOS] and the Cornell Lab [All About Birds], for instance) do not recognize the Mountain Pygmy Owl as a full species. Instead, they consider this population to be a subspecies of the Northern Pygmy Owl, along with various other Pygmy Owls in Mexico and Central America.
At this level, the taxonomic determination of this population is pretty straight forward. It is in dispute. Lumpers consider it part of the Northern Pygmy Owl complex, splitters consider it a separate species (they also consider other populations in Mexico and Central America to be full species [e.g., the Guatemalan Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium cobanense]).
But let us not leave well enough alone. The IOU and AOS use some of the same English common and Latin binomials to describe the various (grouped or split) species populations. It can be very confusing.
For our part, we throw our weight (something less than that of a piece of down) behind the IOU based on our personal observations of the various species.