Barking owl
| Barking owl | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Strigiformes |
| Family: | Strigidae |
| Genus: | Ninox |
| Species: | N. connivens |
| Binomial name | |
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Ninox connivens (Latham, 1801) |
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The barking owl (Ninox connivens), also known as the winking owl, is a nocturnal bird species native to mainland Australia and parts of Papua New Guinea and the Moluccas. They are a medium-sized brown owl and have a characteristic voice with calls ranging from a barking dog noise to a shrill human-like howl of great intensity.
The Red List of Threatened Species refers to this species as the barking boobook. However, this is not used as a common name in Australia or other English speaking areas of the species range.
The barking owl was first described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1801 with the binomial name Falco connivens. Latham commented that the species "Inhabits New Holland, but no history annexed, further than that it has a wonderful faculty of contracting and dilating the iris: and that the native name is Goora-a-Gang."
There are four subspecies:
The barking owl is coloured brown with white spots on its wings and a vertically streaked chest. They have large eyes that have a yellow iris, a discrete facial mask and yellow skin on the feet. Their underparts are brownish-grey and coarsely spotted white with their tail and flight feathers being strongly banded brown and white. They are a robust, medium-sized owl 390–440 mm long and their wingspan is between 850–1200 mm. They weigh between 380 and 960 grams[p20]. Size varies only slightly between the male and female birds with the male barking owl being 8-10 percent heavier. They are one of only a handful of owl species exhibiting normal sexual dimorphism. In a banding study conducted in the Pilliga forests of northern New South Wales, males averaged 824 grams with females averaging 745 grams[p20]. In Australia, the smallest barking owls are found on Cape York Peninsular and the largest in Southern Australia.
The barking owl lives in mainland Australia along the eastern and northern coast of the continent and the south west areas surrounding Perth. Inland they occupy areas near lakes and waterways or other wooded environments. They also live in drier parts of Papua New Guinea and the Moluccas (Halmahera, Morotai, Bacan and Obi). Once widespread, barking owls are now less common in southern mainland Australia.
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Wikipedia