I came across this odd phenomenon in a small number of Burrowing Owls and thought you guys would enjoy seeing it.
It doesn't seem to be well documented yet, even though a number of people seem to be aware of it. I've seen people list the cause as blindness, a generic disorder caused by inbreeding, a recessive genetic trait, something that only occurs in juveniles, and blindness.
The original photo I saw, and the main post photo got an award. I went looking for others and found this thread on a photography site.
The photographer noticed in the family of owls, most had the standard yellow eyes, but others had black or best black eyes, so they returned to try to get better pictures.
If you zoom in on these, you can see they are a mix of yellow and black.
From the forum photographer:
So far, there has not been any conclusion as to why are the eyes so black. Some said that younger owls are born like this. But that is not true, since I've taken many pictures of very young owls with normal yellow and black eyes. One person posted this link saying it may be a certain type of burrowing owl only found in Cape coral Florida. Also, not true, since that is on the other coast of Florida and I am on the east coast of Florida.
I personally think it is a genetic issue with only a VERY few owls that have this condition. Anyway, if anyone has any concrete proof or suggestions what causes this condition, I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say. Thanks for viewing.
Florida is like 100 miles across. I wouldn't think it would be a challenge for a species to range from one coast to the other.
Definitely plausible. People don't typically think of Burrowing Owls as flyers, but they definitely are.
I took it as the person saying "hey, I'm no scientist. What the heck do I know?"
Florida also has a smaller, darker subspecies of Eastern Screech Owl, Otus asio floridanus.