Mottled Wood Owl Strix ocellata
Etymology:
- Strix : Latin word for screech owl believed to suck the blood of infants.
- Ocellata : Latin word for “Marked with eyelets” derived from oculus- eye
Sub Species :
- S.o. grisescens – Base of Himalayas in North West India South to about Rajasthan, and East to Bihar
- S.o. grandis – South Gujarat (Saurashtra Peninsula), in West India
Vernacular name: Pun: Ghona ulloo, Guj: Girnari/Van ghuvad, Mal: Kollikkuravan, Hindi: Girnari ghuggu, Mar: Chatteri Vanghubad
Distribution in India: Resident of peninsular India
Description: Size of 41–48 cm. The facial disc is white with concentric black barring, and some rufous-orange mottling. The upperparts are grey, mottled and vermiculated with reddish-brown, black, white and buff; flight-feathers and tail barred grey-brown and black; throat is chestnut and black with white stippling; prominent white collar on neck side; underparts are white to golden with narrow blackish cross-bars; tarsus feathered buffish; irides are dark brown; cere and bill are horn-black; and toes are brownish-flesh or dirty yellowish-brown. Juvenile has whiter crown, whitish nape; mantle and wing coverts with narrow black bars.
Habitat: It is found in wooded plains and lowland hills, open woodlands, clumps of mango trees, tamarind and banyan groves, densely foliaged trees on outskirts of villages and cultivation. It confined to lowlands.
Food habits: It eats rats, mice and other rodents, and small birds up to size of Rock Dove, crabs, lizards, and large insects such as beetles.
Breeding habits: Breeds in Nov–Apr in South India, Feb–Mar in North India. They produce an eerie chuhua-aa call with a quaver in the second note. This call is an antiphonal duet of the male and female. The male calls one or two times followed by the female’s shorter and less tremulous version .They nest usually in natural, mostly unlined tree hollow, and rarely in old stick nest of other bird. They lay a clutch size of 2-3 eggs.
The eerie call has been associated with ill omen in some parts of Kerala. The call is interpreted as povaa-aa (=”let us go” in Malayalam) and likened to a summons to the spirit world