Barking Owl Barking

The repetitive ‘wuh wuh’ call of a Barking Owl makes their name an obvious choice, what I hadn’t realised is how the call affects their throat hackles.

Barking Owl (Ninox connivens)
1/800, f5.6, ISO 1600

Barking Owls are mid-sized hawk-owls. They are striking birds with white-spotted greyish-brown feathers and underparts that are heavily streaked with white. They have yellow feet and bills, and large, round yellow eyes. They are magnificent.

Barking Owl (Ninox connivens)
1/800, f7.1, ISO 400

Along with their ‘barking dog’ call they have a blood-curdling alarm call that apparently sends shivers up and down the spines of people lucky enough to hear it. The number of Barking Owls is decreasing as their habitat is being destroyed and nesting hollows are lost. They generally mate for life and re-use their nesting hollows.

I’ve included the two images above as comparisons for the next image.

Barking Owl (Ninox connivens)
1/2000, f9, ISO 800

I saw the owl in the image above on a recent trip to an organisation that rehabilitates injured wildlife. As I watched it began calling, ‘wuh wuh’, and as it called so its throat hackles puffed into a splendid feathered beard. My challenge to myself was to try to capture this momentary puff of feathers along with the intense look that accompanied the call; luckily the owl was very obliging and called again.

Who would have thought that writing ‘hackles’ in the paragraph above would have led to a delay of over an hour. The term ‘throat hackles’ is commonly used when describing Australian Ravens and other corvid species but it doesn’t seem to be in general use for the throat feathers of other species. A vast amount of googling, and looking through books and calling a birding friend with different books didn’t give any answers. There was a fair bit of talk about hackles on the back of dogs’ necks and roosters got a few mentions too. If anyone can shed any light on this I’d be interested to know more.

Happy birding

Kim

Whistling Kite Portraits (click to see images) – here are the collated responses from the ‘which portrait is best’ post. I’ve tracked down just under 100 votes and have included people’s comments. Thank you so much, it was fascinating to hear your responses and a great reminder of how we all see something different, which is one of my favourite things about photography.

Image 1 – 25%

Striking, quizzical, regal, disbelief/shock, head feathers, stance, bold, cheeky, personality, quirky pose, out of focus eucalypts give more realism/context/breadth, unique pose, trees give depth, p’d off sea eagle, personality. A couple of other comments found the trees distracting – so interesting!

Image 2 – 20%

Supercilious scrutiny, expression, pose, uncertainty, curious, alertness, wing markings, slightly humorous, fantastic eye and clarity, beak and look

Image 3 – 55%

Colours, eye, intent, colour, detail, eyes, background, classic, scruffy, stalking, beak curl, shallow depth of field, no sky, tonal shift, drama, background, hunkered pose, background, vivid, interesting pose, background, character, read to pounce, beaut hairstyle, fine eye resolution, less shading on eye, more striking beak, needs a self-esteem boost, nice texture, darker background, nice resolution on smaller features around mouth, emotion, beautiful detail, stand out, intensity in stare, rich golden brown colours in plumage, clarity and colour, clarity, colour, light, personality.

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