The Whiskered Screech Owl is a small owl restricted to oak woodlands in canyons and foothills in Mexico, barely reaching into southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
It is finely patterned in gray, black, and white. Very similar to Western Screech-Owl; best distinguished by voice. Two song types: one a relatively even series of five to eight "toot" notes; the other sounds like morse code: "toot-toot, toot, toot, toot-toot, toot." Also note paler bill than Western Screech-Owl. Cornell All About Birds
We observed Whiskered Screech Owls in Cave Creek Arizona near the Mexican border and heard their morse code call many times during the nights. Very cool indeed.
While hiking the trails and canyons in the Huachuca Mountains quite often we encountered U.S. Border Patrols. Weird to be hiking along in the wilderness and all of a sudden there are fully armed personnel on the trail. I should mention that periodically large groups of males, mostly teenagers would cross the paths ahead of us and disappear into the wilderness. They told us to be careful hiking the trails because you are so very close to the Mexican border but say you are mostly safe with the human smugglers. It’s the drug smugglers that you don’t want to cross paths with.
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