Before we get too excited about a barking
owl in our midst, there was a similar thread on Birding-aus a couple of years
ago. HANZAB (Volume 4) states ‘…probably has widest known range of
calls of any Aust Ninox; calls variously described as hoots, croaks, brays,
yelps, growls, trills, screams and squeals. Calls vary from low to load and
from soft to strident’.
Cheers
Alastair
From: Philip Veerman
[
Sent: Thursday, 15 September 2005
6:58 PM
To: George and Sophie
Cc:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Barking
Owl?
Pity this did not come up at the COG meeting last night. It
would generate much interest. It is not unprecedented but a very unusual or
rare occurrence if that is what it is. This is well worth looking out for. As
you can see from the extract below, the timing appears consistent with previous
GBS observations, though this is with a small sample size. Here is the text
from my book: Canberra Birds: A Report on the first 21 years of the Garden Bird
Survey, (page 62).
"Barking Owl Ninox connivens
A
rare species that inhabits woodland and occasionally turns up in suburbs at the
western side of the city. Interesting that observations are only in the months
of July, August and one in September. This suggests that, like the common Southern Boobook, both species are noted most often in
the early part of their breeding period. The Barking Owl (probably because it
is bigger), begins breeding earlier in the year than the Southern
Boobook. There are no ACT breeding records (Wilson 1999).
Rank: 174, A = 0.00021, F = 0.29%, W = 0.5,
R = 0.017%, G = 1.21."
