Australian High Country Owls

About this book

Australian High Country Owls provides the latest scientific information on Australian owl species, especially Ninox owls. It details studies of Southern Boobooks and Powerful Owls, visits to North America and Europe to learn about owl research, and the resulting publications that overturned some existing beliefs about Australian owls. Ultimately, this led to the discovery of a new owl species in Indonesia, the Little Sumba Hawk-Owl.

Appendices cover the biology, conservation and rehabilitation of Australian owls, including: field recognition, subspecies taxonomy, habitat, behaviour, food, range, migration, breeding, voice and calls, status and myths, questions about each species, and techniques for caring for injured and orphaned owls.

The book includes numerous photographs of different owl species, and will be a handy reference for bird researchers and amateur bird watchers alike.

Contents

Preface and acknowledgements
Chapter 1 What is an owl?
Chapter 2 What is a Ninox?
Chapter 3 What is a Southern Boobook?

Studying owls
Chapter 4 David Fleay
Chapter 5 Surveying owls
Chapter 6 Finding owls
Chapter 7 Trapping and handling owls
Chapter 8 Telemetry

Diet and hunting - medium-sized owls
Chapter 9 Spotted Owls
Chapter 10 Boobook summer diet
Chapter 11 Boobook prey size
Chapter 12 Northern Hawk-Owls and Long-eared Owls
Chapter 13 Winter Boobook diet
Chapter 14 Great Horned Owls and versatility
Chapter 15 Great Grey Owls and wing formulae
Chapter 16 Powerful Owl diet
Chapter 17 Forest owl diets
Chapter 18 Powerful Owls and dimorphism

Breeding
Chapter 19 Southern Boobook calls
Chapter 20 Borders
Chapter 21 Duetting and duelling
Chapter 22 Weather and calling
Chapter 23 A lover's triangle
Chapter 24 Pre-breeding behaviour
Chapter 25 Colour plates
Chapter 26 Nests and breeding habitat
Chapter 27 Timing of breeding
Chapter 28 Pair behaviour - incubation
Chapter 29 Pair behaviour - prey deliveries
Chapter 30 Fledging age
Chapter 31 Female desertion
Chapter 32 Fledgling behaviour
Chapter 33 Snowy Owls
Chapter 34 David Lack's theory of limiting factors
Chapter 35 Tawny Owls in Kielder Forest
Chapter 36 Duelling and nest failures

Conservation
Chapter 37 Spotted Owls
Chapter 38 Athene and Burrowing Owls
Chapter 39 Little Owls
Chapter 40 Conserving Australian owls
Chapter 41 Conservation techniques

Wallacea
Chapter 42 Wallacea
Chapter 43 Sumba Barn Owls
Chapter 44 Sumba Boobook
Chapter 45 New species
Chapter 46 Eviction

Customer Reviews

Biography

Jerry Olsen has studied birds of prey for 40 years, in the United States, Canada and Australia, and has written more than 130 publications on birds of prey including four books. He is a member of the Institute for Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra. In 2002, Jerry, Susan Trost, Michael Wink and Heidi Sauer-Gurth were the first to describe and name the Little Sumba Hawk-Owl Ninox sumbaensis. Jerry Olsen is the author of Australian High Country Raptors.