Pueo Owl Maui Ceramic Art Tile
— the day owl that watches back.
Not only on a wall.
“The Hawaiian short-eared owl, found only here. Pueo flies by day across the upcountry pastures of Maui, low and slow above the grass, then lifts again. In Hawaiian families pueo is an aumakua, an ancestral guardian, and stories of a pueo appearing at the right moment are still told around kitchen tables. The bird and the meaning travel together. On the slopes above Kula at the long edge of afternoon, it can be only a brown shape on a fencepost. Or yellow eyes, returned.
Pueo Owl Maui Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Pueo (Asio flammeus sandwichensis) is the Hawaiian short-eared owl, an endemic subspecies and the only owl native to Hawaiʻi. On Maui the bird ranges from sea level to the high alpine of Haleakalā, but is most reliably seen across the upcountry pastures and grasslands of Kula, the slopes of Haleakalā National Park, and the open country around Polipoli, places where the grass is low enough to hunt over. Pueo is distinct from the common barn owl, Tyto alba, a later introduced species; the two are sometimes confused at distance, but the barn owl flies at night and pueo flies by day. State population estimates run into the low thousands, with the Oʻahu population listed as endangered under Hawaiʻi state law.
Pueo is unusual among owls in being active by day. The bird quarters open ground at low altitude, twenty or thirty feet above the grass, with slow wingbeats and long glides, dropping suddenly on its target. The diet is mostly small mammals such as rats and mice, with birds and insects taken on the wing. Pueo nests on the ground in tall grass, which is why the open upcountry of Maui suits the species and why field fires and feral cats are among the threats tracked by the Hawaiʻi Division of Forestry and Wildlife. The bird is largely silent outside breeding. The shift toward daytime activity is thought to follow the historical absence of native mammalian predators on the islands; before contact, the Hawaiian hoary bat was the only native land mammal in Hawaiʻi.
To see a pueo on Maui, drive the upcountry roads of Kula or the lower switchbacks of Crater Road into Haleakalā National Park between mid-morning and late afternoon. Pull over where the pasture is open and the fenceline is long. Look first along fenceposts and on the ground; the bird's mottled brown plumage matches dry grass, and a perched pueo can sit unmoved while a car passes. In flight the silhouette is broad and round-winged, the underside pale, the wingbeats slow. Sightings are not guaranteed; many longtime upcountry residents speak of only a handful of clear meetings in a lifetime. Pueo is also a recognised aumakua in Hawaiian families, and many of those who see one consider the meeting carefully rather than count it as luck.