Southern Boobook

Mopoke
Morepork in Warkworth, New Zealand
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Strigiformes
Family:	Strigidae
Genus:	Ninox
Species:	N. novaeseelandiae
Binomial name
Ninox novaeseelandiae (Gmelin, 1788)

The Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae), also called the Mopoke, Morepork, Ruru or Tasmanian Spotted Owl, is a small brown owl found throughout New Zealand, Tasmania, across most of mainland Australia and in Timor, southern New Guinea and nearby islands.

The bird has almost 20 alternative common names,^{[citation needed]} most of which – including Mopoke, Morepork, Ruru and Boobook – are onomatopoeic, as they emulate the bird's distinctive two-pitched call.

Two subspecies, the Lord Howe Boobook and the Norfolk Island Boobook both became extinct during the 20th century.

Habits

It occurs in most habitats with trees, ranging from deep tropical forests to isolated stands at the edges of arid zones, farmland, or alpine grasslands, but is most common in temperate woodland. They are usually seen singly, in pairs, or in small family groups of an adult pair and up to three young.

Although mainly nocturnal, they are sometimes active at dawn and dusk. The main hunting times are evenings and mornings, with brief bursts of activity through the night. On dark nights they often perch through the middle hours and, particularly if the weather is bad, may hunt by daylight instead.

Although their main hunting technique is perch-and-pounce, they are agile birds with a swift, goshawk-like wing action and the ability to manoeuvre rapidly when pursuing prey or hawking for insects. Almost any suitably sized prey is taken, particularly small birds, mammals and large insects such as moths, grasshoppers and, in New Zealand, wetas.

During the day, moreporks sleep in roosts. By night they hunt a variety of animals – mainly large invertebrates including scarab and huhu beetles, moths and caterpillars, wētā and spiders. They also take small birds, rats and mice. They can find suitable food in pine forests as well as native forest.

In fiction

In the fictional Discworld novels, the main city is called Ankh-Morpork and has moreporks on its coat-of-arms. Terry Pratchett had not heard of the bird when he came up with the name but retroactively associated the name with the bird in later books.

References

• BirdLife International (2005). Ninox novaeseelandiae. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 11 May 2006.

External links

• Ruru, the Morepork, the New Zealand Owl
• Australian Museum - Southern Boobook
• World Owl Trust - Southern Boobook
• The Owl That Called Its Own Name