Southern Boobook

BIRD: linking the biodiversity community

Categories: Birds | Nocturnal birds

The Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae) is a small brown owl mainly found in south-eastern and south-western Australia and throughout New Zealand. Further north it is less common but widespread, its range extending to most of northern, central and western Australia, Timor, southern New Guinea and nearby islands. It used to also inhabit Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island but is now locally extinct on the former, almost so on the latter.

It occurs in most habitats with trees, ranging from deep tropical forests to isolated stands at the edges of arid zones, farmland, or alpine grasslands, but is most common in temperate woodland.

Southern Boobooks are usually seen singly, in pairs, or in small family groups of an adult pair and up to three young.

It is mainly nocturnal, but is sometimes active at dawn and dusk and, in New Zealand, even during the day. The main hunting times are evenings and mornings, with brief bursts of activity through the night. On dark nights Boobooks often perch through the middle hours and, particularly if the weather is bad, may hunt by daylight instead.

Although the Boobook's main hunting technique is perch and pounce, it is an agile bird with a swift, goshawk-like wing action, and the ability to manoeuvere rapidly when pursuing prey or hawking for insects. Almost any suitably sized prey is taken, particularly birds, insects, and small mammals.

The cheery, echoing call of the Southern Boobook is well-known, and instantly recognisable to anyone who has spent time in the bush after dark. It has earned it a score of affectionate onomatopoeic common names in different regons: mopoke or boobook in Australia; in New Zealand it is ruru to Maori, morepork to Pakeha.