Photos by Barry Reed
One of the 3 owls of the Scotopelia genus, though there is disagreement if they should be separate from the other fish owls (Buffy, Tawny, BFO) of the Ketupa genus.
This rare owl is found in West Africa, only along rivers, where it hunts fish, freshwater crabs, and probably other yummy water creatures.
It is closely related to the larger and darker Pel’s Fishing Owl, found in the same part of the world. They don’t seen to compete, rather the Rufous takes the more shallow waters, and they deeper ones are used by the Pel’s.
The RFO is 20 in / 50 cm, while the PFO is 25 in / 63 cm.
Any idea why it’s so light coloured for a nocturnal owl? That’s an interesting adaptation.
(Guessing it’s nocturnal by the black eyes)
Edit: just remembered Barn Owls are nocturnal too and yet are light coloured. I’ve never actually thought this through before. Evolution is fascinating.
I tried for about an hour to find any talk on this, but came up empty handed. I don’t know much about the area it lives in either.
There aren’t many pics of the Rufous, and they’re a good number of the slightly darker Pel’s Fishing Owl, but even that one I wouldn’t say blends in well compared to most owls.
It doesn’t jump out at you, but it isn’t hidden like a Screech or Barred Owl. It doesn’t seem too far off from the Barn Owl though.
They’re even paler when they’re young.
They’re pretty decent sized, especially the Pel’s, which is just shy of Snowy size, which makes the Pel’s the sixth largest owl or so. I’m not sure what, if anything would eat the owl, so maybe camo isn’t a huge priority.
One of my other thoughts is maybe it’s a compromise between tree camo and riverbank camo.
They seem to be lacking many special owl traits, at least the Pel’s since most of the info out there is for that. They don’t have the fringed feathers for quiet flight, and they have not great hearing for an owl.
These are really odd birds and I’ll have to keep an eye out for better info on them.
Wow, they really are odd birds! Theory: Pel’s are such an apex predator that they don’t need to be quiet or camouflaged anymore, and moved those points over to looking kinda flash (for an owl) instead?
Also that owl in the third picture looks like a thumb with a suspicious face drawn on it, haha.
Thank you for all the owls, and for looking stuff up to answer all the questions. I really appreciate people with interesting obsessions who want to share what they love with others.
Hah, it does look like a thumb!
I’m curious if the fishing owls lost the owl abilities over time or if they never evolved them to begin with. The article said they don’t need them, since it’s not like the fish can hear them over the noise of the river, so all that stealth is unnecessary for them to get food.
I just love learning in general. I guess I was one of those kids always asking why this, why that, and never stopped. You could send me on a mission to research whatever. I did appreciate owls before and started to visit them after meeting my girlfriend who likes owls and subbing to r/superbowl, but that’s what made me sad coming to Lemmy and seeing no one keeping it going, I was like I can come up with a few things to post, I have some owl pics. Little did I know! 😆
And poof, now I’m the owl expert! But it’s fun you guys keep me focused, and as much as I share with you all, I’m learning even more, so that makes me happy.