Southern boobook

The Australian boobook (Ninox boobook) is a species of owl native to mainland Australia, southern New Guinea, the island of Timor, and the Sunda Islands. Described by John Latham in 1801, it was generally considered to be the same species as the morepork of New Zealand until 1999. Its name is derived from its two-tone boo-book call. Eight subspecies of the Australian boobook are recognized, with three further subspecies being reclassified as separate species in 2019 due to their distinctive calls and genetics. The smallest owl on the Australian mainland, the Australian boobook is 27 to 36 cm (10.5 to 14 in) long, with predominantly dark-brown plumage with prominent pale spots. It has grey-green or yellow-green eyes. It is generally nocturnal, though is sometimes active at dawn and dusk, retiring to roost in secluded spots in the foliage of trees. The Australian boobook feeds on insects and small vertebrates, hunting by pouncing on them from tree perches. Breeding takes place from late winter to early summer, using tree hollows as nesting sites. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed the Australian boobook as being of least concern on account of its large range and apparently stable population. English ornithologist John Latham described the boobook owl as Strix boobook in 1801, writing about it in English, before giving it its scientific name, taking its species epithet from a local Dharug word for the bird. The species description was based on a painting by Thomas Watling of a bird—the holotype—in the Sydney district in the 1790s. John Gould described Athene marmorata in 1846 from a specimen in South Australia; this is regarded as a synonym. German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup classified the two taxa into subgenus Spiloglaux of a new genus Ieraglaux in 1852, renaming S. boobook to Ieraglaux (Spiloglaux) bubuk. In his 1865 Handbook to the Birds of Australia, Gould recognised three species, all of which he placed in the genus Spiloglaux: S. marmoratus from South Australia, S. boobook, which is widespread across the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and S. maculatus from southeastern Australia and Tasmania. Meanwhile, in India, English naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson had established the genus Ninox in 1837, and his countryman Edward Blyth placed the Australian boobook in the new genus in 1849. 'Australian boobook' has been designated the official name by the International Ornithological Committee, changed from 'southern boobook in 2019 with the separation of some Indonesian subspecies. The common name comes from the two-tone call of the bird, and has also been transcribed as 'mopoke'. William Dawes recorded the name bōkbōk 'an owl' in 1790 or 1791, in his transcription of the Dharug language, and English explorer George Caley had recorded the native name as buck-buck during the earliest days of the colony, reporting that early settlers had called it cuckoo owl as its call was reminiscent of the common cuckoo. He added, 'The settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the Cuckoo, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the instances they point out.' Gould recorded local aboriginal names: Goor-goor-da (Western Australia), Mel-in-de-ye (Port Essington), and Koor-koo (South Australia). Alternative common names include spotted owl and brown owl. The Ngarluma people of the western Pilbara knew it as gurrgumarlu. In the Yuwaaliyaay dialect of the Gamilaraay language of southeastern Australia, the Australian boobook is guurrguurr. Dutch naturalist Gerlof Mees and German evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr regarded the taxonomy of the boobook owl complex as extremely challenging, the latter remarking in 1943 that it was 'one of the most difficult problems I have ever encountered'. In his 1964 review of Australian owls, Mees treated Australian and New Zealand boobooks, along with several taxa from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as one species—Ninox novaeseelandiae—with 16 subspecies. In his 1968 book Nightwatchmen of the Bush and Plain, Australian naturalist David Fleay observed that the boobooks from Tasmania more closely resembled those of New Zealand than those from mainland Australia, though he followed Mees in treating them as a single species. The Australian boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the Handbook of the Birds of the World in 1999, though several authors, including Australian ornithologists Les Christidis and Walter Boles, continued to treat the three taxa (Australian plus Tasmanian boobooks and moreporks) as a single species. Examining both morphological and genetic (cytochrome b) characters in 2008, German biologist Michael Wink and colleagues concluded that the Australian boobook is distinct from the morepork and Tasmanian boobook (which they proposed to be raised to species status as Ninox leucopsis), and that it is instead the sister taxon to the barking owl (N. connivens). A 2017 study by Singapore-based biologist Chyi Yin Gwee and colleagues analysing both multi-locus DNA and boobook calls confirmed a sister relationship of N. n. novaeseelandiae and N. (n.) leucopsis and their close relationship to N. connivens. Genetic and call analysis show the Christmas boobook (N. natalis) to be very close to the Australian populations of the Australian boobook, leading Gwee and colleagues to suggest it be reclassified within this species. Gwee and colleagues found that boobook populations on larger mountainous islands were more distinct from Australian stock, while those on flatter smaller islands were much more similar, suggesting that these locations were colonised much more recently after previous populations had become extinct.