AN AUSTRALIAN BIRD BOOK. 85 



OftDER XVI.— STRIGIFORMES, NOCTURNAL BIRDS OP 

 PREY, OWLS. 



F. 70. BUBONIDAE (11) HAWK OWLS, 280 sp.— 47(44) A., 

 88(74)0., 33(17)P., 48(42)E., 34(16)Nc, 75(61)N1. 

 11 175 Boobook Owl (Cuckoo), Ninox boobook, A. 

 4 4 Stat. v.c. timber 16 



Head, upper, wings, tail reddish-brown; under rufous 

 blotched white; facial disc indistinct, grayish- white 

 edged black; f., larger. Insects, mice, birds. 

 17G Spotted Owl, N. maculata, S.Q., N.S.W., V., S.A., T., 



King Is. Stat. r. timber 13 



Head, upper brown spotted white; under brown blotched 

 tawny and white; disc indistinct; f., slightly larger. 

 Insects, birds. 



177 Winking Owl (Western), N. connivens, A., exc.N.W.A. 



Stat. c. brushes, wooded gullies 16 

 Upper dark-brown spotted white; tail dark-brown barred 

 grayish-white; under mottled brown, white; disc indis- 

 tinct; f., larger. Insects, birds. 



178 Powerful Owl (Eagle), N. strenua, N. Ter., E.A., 



S.A. Stat. r. dense gullies 24 



Crown, upper brown marked whitish; face, throat, chest 

 whitish streaked brown; rest of under whitish barred 

 brown; f., sim. Birds, quadrupeds. 



World. The different kinds of Owls are so closely similar that 

 there are many disputes as to their classification, and it is not 

 likely that we shall ever be able to recognize in the living, free 

 state all the species recognized by scientists. 



Indeed, I was much interested at the Adelaide Museum to see 

 our leading ornithologists fail to pick out the skins of two Eng- 

 lish Barn Owls when they were placed with three Australian 

 Lesser Masked Owls, and yet ornithologists give our birds 

 such widely-different names that literature is useless to us. 

 These names have seriously hampered the popularization of bird- 

 study in Australia. If ornithologists, with skins in hand, cannot 

 separate them, what is the use of manufacturing species? 



As Owls are active late in the afternoon or at night, there has 

 always been a certain amount of mystery regarding them, and, 

 speaking generally, the ordinary observer knows little of them. 

 Two of the Australian birds have forced themselves on our notice 

 to some extent. The Powerful Owl, the largest of our Owls, has 

 alarmed many by means of its blood-curdling screeches heard in 

 quiet forest gullies. 



The Boobook Owl, though not often seen, calls "Mopoke," which 

 sounded like "Boobook" to the aboriginal ear, but became 

 "Cuckoo" — the best-loved bird-call of their far-distant home to the 

 ears of the homesick first white residents. And was it not, they 

 asked, what one might expect in a country where Christmas came 

 at the wrong time of the year, where the trees were always green, 

 and shed their bark instead of their leaves — where the leaves 



