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 glorious weblog publish 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 buddy of mine commented that “all of them look the identical anyway”, which coming from an professional for shorebirds was a bit wealthy – so this publish 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, no less than it may be heard very continuously – although in fact, that doesn’t imply it’s simple 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 identify 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). A number of the pictures 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 incorporates surprisingly little data on the species (although the part on conduct has the useful data “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 identify Noctua ochracea isn’t significantly attention-grabbing, although it appears that evidently the owl is usually additionally known as Noctua (or Ninox) perversa, because the identify ochracea erroneously considered preoccupied (supply). Which in fact raises the query what the precise perversion of this owl could possibly be.
For a boobook, it’s moderately small. And you may inform from me writing a sentence like this that there actually isn’t a lot data on the species.
Even eBird with its normally moderately good species characterizations doesn’t add a lot – “A medium-sized brown owl with a rounded head”, is that each one?
