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Barry Boobook
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Baby Boobooks
Gidday, I am a Southern Boobook, my relatives and I live in forest and woodland
through out a large part of Australia and New Zealand.
My scientific name is Ninox novaeseelandiae. The first part of my name comes from two words:
Nisus referring to sparrowhawk and Noctua, which is the Latin for the goddess, Minerva’s owl.
The second part means I come from New Zealand.
Southern Boobooks can be found in just about any habitat with trees,
from dry woodlands to tropical rainforest. It is important for us to live
in areas where the trees are large enough and old enough to have hollows.
We are nocturnal hunters and excellent eyesight and hearing to help us.
Owl eyes are forward facing, unlike other birds.
This allows for binocular vision, which is needed for depth perception.
Important when we swoop on prey, so we do not crash into the ground.
Owl eyes are very large. If humans had eyes the same size,
in relation to their heads, they would be as big as tennis balls.
Large eyes allow a lot of light in but mean that they will cannot turn in the socket.
We make up for this by having a very flexible neck. An owl has fourteen vertebrae
in its neck (twice as many as humans) to allow it to turn 270°, not 360° as was sometimes thought.
An owl eye has three eyelids. The upper lid closes when they blink, the lower when asleep.
The “nictating membrane” is a thin layer of tissue that
closes diagonally and cleans and protects the eye.
We owls have a few tricks to help us to hear better. The first is our flat face,
more obvious in barn owls. This acts as a satellite dish
and collects the sound waves. The ears themselves are large and most often lop-sided.
The large ear opening, covered by feathers,
lets plenty of sound into our ears. The lop-sided arrangement of the ear
openings allows the sound to reach each ear at a slightly different time.
Super soft feathers with rounded edges make for silent flight, important not only
for sneaking up on prey, but also to maximise what can be heard by the owl.
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