This is an amazing owl I came across last night. Such wonderful coloration and texture to its appearance. It reminds me of a lightly charred log from a campfire. Nice high resolution photos too, so you can really check out all the details.
Photos and descriptions by Hari K Patibanda
Mottled Wood Owl Sighting by chance
A large owl around 50 cms tall and sighted in thick canopy cover. The Owl is exclusive to India and due to the Mottled body colors, is hard to spot without a call. It is known as a strong predator and is a true Nocturnal Owl unlike several others which are mostly twilight / crepuscular.
It was quite by chance that we came across the bird perched on a lovely tree. The day was very cloudy and that maybe the reason why the Owl was seen so late!
Yeah that camouflage is pretty amazing. And I’ve been really surprised how many of these owls you’re posting are in the tropics?! My whole life, I thought of owls as cold weather birds for some reason.
It’s one of the really neat things I’m able to appreciate about the owls at this point. I’m starting to get to more abstract species trying to find ones I haven’t seen yet that are visually different than more well known ones, and finding ones like this that are so different from any other blows my mind. Even the ones that live near wherever we’re all from are mysterious to us due to their nature, so it’s hard to comprehend the expansiveness of the world of owls. Some like the Barred and Barn are so successful they are almost everywhere, and others like the various Pacific Island species are only found in 1 unique ecosystem in the whole world, but they have been successful at doing that for tens of thousands of years.
I forget if it was you the other day that commented first about not knowing about the tropic owls, but I like comments like that since it gives me something more specific to post about for you guys. I want to make sure I keep it fresh and get to keep showing you new things to keep you excited about owls. Some of these obscure guys can be hard to find pics of, but to me I’ll take a meh pic of an owl I don’t see much over a high quality hundredth pic of a common one. I love them all, but I need that variety!
So if there’s anything else anyone is curious about, don’t be afraid to say something. I won’t ever try to make anyone look dumb, and I’ll try to find an answer to whatever I can. After all, I’m not anywhere close to an expert on any of this, just a fan like you all.
Well I really appreciate the effort you put into this. It’s so much fun to read these posts and learn about owls I would never have known existed otherwise. Like, somehow I could always imagine like sparrows being this diverse, but it would never have occurred to me that owls are as well.
Ironically, what I do giving them exposure is probably what an owl would want the least…their whole thing is being unseen and unheard, and I go around messing it up every day! 😅
I’m glad you enjoy it, I know I’ve learned more than I thought possible about them too.