AN AUSTRALIAN BIHD BOOK. 
85 
ORDER XVI.— STRIGIFORME8, NOCTURNAL BIRDS OF 
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)N.l. 
11 175 Boobook Owl (Cuckoo), Ninox hoobooky A. 
44 Stat. v.c. timber IG 
Head, upper, wings, tail reddish-brown; under rufous 
blotched white; facial disc indistinct, grayish- white 
edged black; f., larger. Insects, mice, birds. 
176 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), Is!, 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 ns 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 
