Barking owl

Appearance

The barking owl is coloured brown with white spots on its wings and a streaked chest. They have large eyes that have a yellow iris, a dark tipped beak and almost no facial mask. Their underparts are brownish-grey and coarsely spotted white with their tail and flight feathers being strongly banded brown and white. They are a robust, medium sized owl 390–440 mm long and their wingspan is between 850–1200 mm. They weigh between 380 and 960 grams[p20]. Size varies only slightly between the male and female birds with the male barking owl being 8-10 percent heavier. In a banding study conducted in the Pilliga forests of northern New South Wales, males averaged 824 grams with females averaging 745 grams[p20]. In Australia, the smallest barking owls are found on Cape York Peninsular and the largest in Southern Australia.

Distribution

The barking owl lives in mainland Australia along the eastern and northern coast of the continent and the south west areas surrounding Perth. Inland they occupy areas near lakes and waterways or other wooded environments. They also live in drier parts of Papua New Guinea and the Moluccas . Once widespread, barking owls are now less common in southern mainland Australia.

Status

Barking owls are not listed as threatened on the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. However, their conservation status varies from state to state within Australia. For example:
⤷  The barking owl is listed as 'Threatened' on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act . Under this Act, an ''Action Statement'' for the recovery and future management of this species has been prepared.
⤷  On the 2007 advisory list of threatened vertebrate fauna in Victoria, the barking owl is listed as endangered.
⤷  The barking owl is listed as 'Vulnerable' under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act .
⤷  The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2010 lists the barking owl southern sub-species as 'near threatened'.

Habitat

They choose to live in forests or woodland areas that have large trees for nesting and foliage cover for roosting. They often reside near river, swamp or creek beds as these features often have large trees with hollows required for nesting and the productivity to support sufficient prey.
The only detailed studies of barking owl home-ranges have been conducted in southern Australia where the species is declining. In northern Victoria, barking owl pairs were found to average a home-range of 1424 ha with little overlap between pairs. Foraging was concentrated within forested areas of each home range. These results are mirrored in the Pilliga forests of Northern NSW although there the home ranges were larger, often up to 2500 ha.

Although barking owls are uncommon and sometimes even rare in many suburban areas it is not unheard of that they get accustomed to humans and even start to nest in streets or near farm houses.

Food

The barking owl has one of the broadest diets of any Australian owl. Barking owls hunt in timbered and open habitats but usually rely on trees as hunting perches. Their diet includes prey taken from the ground, the trees,the surface of waterbodies, and directly from the air. In some locations mammals make up the majority of prey biomass with prey sizes from mice and small carnivorous marsupials up to rabbits and brushtail possums around a kilogram or more in weight. Sugar gliders are a frequent prey item. Bats of all sizes are also commonly taken.

In some areas, bird prey items make a sizeable contribution to the diet. Birds up to the size of sulphur-crested cockatoos and ducks are taken, but many smaller birds are more commonly taken. One frequent prey item is the tawny frogmouth, a nocturnal bird of Australian forests and woodlands. Insect prey items can dominate the prey item count. Beetles and moths are commonly taken on the wing. A range of other insects are also consumed. Occasionally frogs, reptiles, fish or crustaceans are eaten. In summary, if an animal can be detected by a barking owl and it is of its size or smaller, it can be considered as potential prey.[pp8–11, 35-77]