Evening birding within the Pronojiwo space of East Java introduced two species. One is a frogmouth (Javan Frogmouth), the opposite an owl (Sunda Scops Owl). Considerably confusingly, inverting the names (i.e., Sunda Frogmouth, Javan Scops Owl) yields two different species that additionally exist. For every, the Javan model is endemic to Java whereas the Sunda model has a broader vary.
Whereas I hoped for the scientific identify of the Sunda Scops Owl (Otus lempiji) to be derived from some evil however sensible naturalist (“Sir Edward Lempi, 1785-1853, British explorer and slave dealer”), sadly, lempi ji is simply the Javanese identify for this owl. Writing weblog posts is usually a drag.
The Sunda Scops Owl is described as pretty frequent and never significantly threatened. It might even profit from papers similar to this one, which finds that the owls want to feed on rats somewhat than on numerous bugs or fish, and thus could also be helpful as pest management on palm oil plantations (the paper was revealed as a part of the first Worldwide Convention on Sustainable Plantation).
The species additionally lives in a extra city atmosphere – college campuses being a very good place each to reside and to be lined by scientific work. Alternatively, its numbers nonetheless appear to be declining (supply).
How a lot house does such an owl want within the wild? One examine utilizing radio telemetry discovered a harmonic imply house vary space of about 4 hectares – that is an space of about 5 to six soccer fields (the commonly acknowledged generic comparability for laypeople).
One other paper utilizing a distinct methodology – response to playback – detected between 1.6 and a couple of.6 owls per 10 hectares, which appears to match effectively with the primary examine.
A 3rd paper seemed on the individuality of owl calls and located that 97% of calls may very well be appropriately assigned to a person owl, and that such assignments had been secure over time. So, presumably one may have the ability to estimate the variety of owls in a selected space by simply figuring out the variety of totally different calls.
In case you are much less eager about scientific info, web sites are masking the Sunda Scops Owl that use a extra lyrical tone: “Because the solar units over Malaysia’s rainforests, a diminutive maestro emerges to start its nightly efficiency. With a repertoire of hoots, whistles, and trills, the Sunda Scops-Owl is a small chicken with an enormous voice.”
Or you possibly can learn the story of Broadway, a Sunda Scops-Owl present in a nasty situation in Singapore (it had presumably been stored as a pet earlier than).
The Javan Frogmouth would presumably be tough to establish solely primarily based on a photograph, however thankfully, it’s the solely frogmouth on Java, so even an ID by a non-expert like me must be pretty dependable.
It was cut up from different, comparable frogmouth species, turning it right into a Javan endemic.
Whereas the second a part of the scientific identify Batrachostomus javensis is self-explanatory, the primary one merely means frogmouth (batrakhos means frog; stoma means mouth). It’s certainly one of 12 species within the genus Batrachostomus, which is by far the largest among the many three genera of frogmouths (the opposite two solely comprise a complete of 4 species).
Whereas there may be restricted analysis on the species, it and the opposite frogmouths have one other declare to fame:
“In a journal article revealed in April 2021, researchers Katja Thömmes and Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring from the Experimental Aesthetics group on the College Hospital Jena, Germany, discovered the frogmouth to be essentially the most “instagrammable” chicken species. Utilizing an algorithm to research the aesthetic enchantment of greater than 27,000 chicken images on Instagram, they discovered that pictures depicting frogmouths obtained the very best variety of likes relative to the posts’ publicity to customers” (supply).
