Австралийский воронкообразный сыч (Ninox boobook)

Species of owl native to Australia

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 long, with predominantly dark brown plumage with prominent pale spots. It has grey green or yellow green eyes. It is generally nocturnal, though sometimes it is 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. This is regarded as a synonym. 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". 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). 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. 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. N. b. boobook, the nominate subspecies, is found on the Australian mainland, from southern Queensland, through New South Wales and Victoria into South Australia. The call is similar to those of the Australian subspecies. N. b. halmaturina is found on Kangaroo Island. It was described by Australian amateur ornithologist Gregory Mathews in 1912 on the basis of darker and more reddish plumage than other subspecies. It is sometimes included in the nominate subspecies. Analysis of its DNA and call differ little from other Australian mainland subspecies. from a specimen from Raffles Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula. Birds from southwestern Australia north to Tantabiddy on the North West Cape and Glenflorrie on the Ashburton River are relatively dark with more uniform rufous brown underparts. Mees classified them as a separate subspecies rufigaster. it resembles subspecies ocellata but is smaller. The subspecies N. b. remigialis was transferred to the barking owl by the International Ornithological Congress in 2022.

The smallest owl on the Australian mainland, the Australian boobook is long. The nominate subspecies is the largest. It has short, rounded wings and a short tail, with a compact silhouette in flight. Australian boobooks on the Australian mainland follow Bergmann's rule, in that birds from cooler and more southerly parts of the range tend to be larger. Thus, birds from the Canberra region weigh around while those from the Cape York Peninsula and Broome are around .

Across Australia, breeding takes place from July to February, though peaks in October, and is generally earlier in more northern areas. Eggs are laid from August to October in Queensland, from September to November in New South Wales and southern Western Australia, July to September in central and northern Western Australia, in October and November in Victoria, and in September to December in South Australia. The Australian boobook nests in holes in trees between 1 and 20 m (3–70 ft) above the ground. A study in Victoria found that larger animals were eaten, including Baillon's crake (Porzana pusilla), common ringtail possum (Pseudocheirus peregrinus) and feral rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Using a fence, branch, or telegraph pole as a perch or vantage point from which to hunt, A decline has occurred on the Swan Coastal Plain north of Perth. There, Australian boobook owls are dying after eating the rodents people have killed with second generation anticoagulant rat poison. Older poisons such as warfarin or coumatetralyl were unlikely to affect owls.