Habitat use by the Burrowing Owl Athene cunicularia (Strigiformes: Strigidae) in a university campus of South Brazil

Unlike most owls, the burrowing owl Athene cunicularia (Molina, 1782) lives mostly on land. In this study, we aimed to investigate habitat use patterns of an A. cunicularia pair by evaluating their living area, the use of height, and the use of substrate in a University area of Guarapuava city, Paraná, Brazil. The owl pair was monitored once a month for 24 hours straight from August 2016 to March 2017. We used the instantaneous scan sampling method for each 24-hour monitoring and recorded the substrate used, the height they were at, and the GPS location of each individual at ten-minute intervals. The height was measured using a metric tape and an inclinometer and the living area was estimated through the minimum convex polygon method. The owl pair was monitored for 192h in total. The ground was the most frequently used substrate (52.7% of all records), whereas the artificial substrate was the least used (6.5%). The A. cunicularia pair occupied mostly the ground level (0 m; 76% of all records) and their living area was 4,431 m² (0.4431 ha). The obtained results of height and substrate use were expected for a burrowing species. The living area observed was relatively small for a bird, though our data suggests that A. cunicularia is a territorial species that spends most of the time near or within its nests.