Sadly, I solely noticed two owl species throughout my week or so on Sulawesi – for a complete description of the owls on the island, see this wonderful weblog submit by Christian Artuso.
Nonetheless, owls are amongst my favourite birds regardless of their annoying habitat of being most simply seen at evening, and so they every have a definite magnificence. A birder good friend of mine commented that “all of them look the identical anyway”, which coming from an knowledgeable for shorebirds was a bit wealthy – so this submit is an try and show him fallacious.
First, the Sulawesi Scops Owl, the one scops owl on the island and a Sulawesi endemic.
It appears fairly widespread, at the very least it may be heard very steadily – although after all, that doesn’t imply it’s straightforward to see (the satirical web site The Onion sells a T-shirt with the slogan “Owls are Assholes”, which I are likely to strongly agree with after an unsuccessful night or evening spent owling).
The scientific title Otus manadensis refers to Manado, the second largest metropolis on Sulawesi situated within the north of the island (and the situation of a surprisingly busy airport which would be the entry level for many birders visiting North Sulawesi). Among the photographs of the owl have been really taken within the Manado space.
Provided that the HBW entry on the Sulawesi Scops Owl has 11 authors, it accommodates surprisingly little info on the species (although the part on habits has the useful info “Nothing appears to have been printed”).
Whereas this owl is listed as Least Concern, the Ochre-bellied Boobook is listed as Close to Threatened, with an estimated inhabitants of 15,000–30,000 people.
It’s restricted to Sulawesi and a few close by islands.
The scientific title Noctua ochracea just isn’t notably attention-grabbing, although plainly the owl is typically additionally known as Noctua (or Ninox) perversa, because the title ochracea erroneously considered preoccupied (supply). Which after all raises the query what the particular perversion of this owl could possibly be.
For a boobook, it’s reasonably small. And you’ll inform from me writing a sentence like this that there actually just isn’t a lot info on the species.
Even eBird with its often reasonably good species characterizations doesn’t add a lot – “A medium-sized brown owl with a rounded head”, is that each one?
