EBird describes the bird as "A fairly small owl of lowland and foothill forest on the islands of Negros and Panay, where it is the only scops-owl.

Occurs together with Luzon boobook, but Negros Scops-Owl has orange rather than yellow eyes and lacks the brown-streaked chest.

[4] Its natural habitats are tropical moist lowland and montane primary and secondary forest up to 1,000 meters above sea level.

The IUCN Red List has assessed this bird as vulnerable with the population being estimated at 1,000 to 2,499 mature individuals.

Its main threat is habitat destruction through both legal and Illegal logging, conversion into farmlands through slash-and-burn, charcoal burning, and mining.

This species is present and is widely observed (consisting of more than two-thirds of all EBird records of this species) by birdwatchers in the Liptong Woodland, a private reforestation project owned by Rene Vendiola in Valencia, Negros Oriental.