Brown Fish Owl

Facts about Brown Fish Owl, The Brown Fish Owl is a variety of owl that comes from the genus Bubo of the Strigidae family. "Scientific name for Brown Fish Owl is Bubo zeylonensis". Brown Fish Owl prefers to live in the humid tropical and warm subtropical divisions of continental Asia and a few offshore islands. The Brown Fish Owl breed is the most extensively distributed species among the four existing species in its genus. The Brown Fish Owl occupies an area of more than 7,000 km (4,300 miles) from the eastern parts of China to Palestine.

Features of Brown Fish Owl

The Brown Fish Owl is a quite a big size bird that has a body length that ranges from 19.2 inches to 23 1/4 inches (48 cm to 58cm). Brown Fish Owls have a wing length between 14 1/4 inches and 17 3/8 inches (35.5 cm and 43.4 inches), and with the tail length between 7.0 inches and 8 7/16 inches (17.5 cm and 21.4 cm), Usually, female owls are bigger and heavier than the male ones, with the average body weight between 1105 grams and 1308 grams (1.1 kg and 1.3 kg).

The Brown Fish Owl has a big size body, with tousled, bushy, flat oriented ear-tufts and elongated legs. The Brown Fish Owl has an indistinct brown colored facial disc, with black shaft-lines on individual feathers. The Brown Fish Owl has golden yellow color eyes, whereas its bill assumes light greenish-grey color, and a dusky upper ridge and tip.

The upperparts of the Brown Fish Owl are light chestnut-brown in color with wide, black shaft-lines and brown colored cross-bars. The Brown Fish Owl's rump, lower back and upper-tail-coverts are light in color and have fine shaft-lines. The tertial feathers, scapulars and wing-coverts of the owl have white color spots, with the white colored outer scapulars on external webs. The flight feathers and the tail feathers are dark brown in color, and they are barred, vermiculated and with a dusky-buff tip. The front neck and the throat of the bird are prominent white in color, with dark shaft-lines.

The underparts of the Brown Fish Owl are light fulvous with fine, wavy light brown to rustic crossbars and dark black shaft-lines. The toes and tarsi of the bird are bare, with dusky to grayish yellow in color, and they are covered with grainy scales. The soles of their toes have sharp scales to help with holding fish and they have horn-brown colored claws.

Diet of Brown Fish Owl

The Brown Fish Owl mostly feeds on frogs, fish and crabs, but it will also feed on rodents, reptiles, birds and big beetles.

Behavior of Brown Fish Owl

The Brown Fish Owl is partially diurnal, and it will roost in big trees during the day and will leave well before the sun sets. Brown Fish Owls can regularly be seen in daytime, occasionally hunting, particularly on gloomy days. Brown Fish Owls soak often by wading into the shallows and rumpling their feathers earlier than drying and cleaning the plumage carefully.

Brown Fish Owls hunt by looking for prey from a branch overlooking water, like a rock or stump on the boundary or in the middle of a watercourse. Brown Fish Owls will regularly fly up and down, occasionally, almost gliding the water. Fish are dug up from the areas close to the water surface.

Breeding of Brown Fish Owl

The breeding season of the Brown Fish Owl generally starts from November to March, mostly between January and February. Brown Fish Owls will breed in deserted stick nests of big birds, or a rock protuberance close to the water or crevice of a stony bank, or wrecks of an old structure. Brown Fish Owls may as well, nest in the frame in a junction of a mature tree, like fit or mango. The female Brown Fish Owl lays one or two spherical, smooth white color eggs in a single clutch.

The average lifespan of the Brown Fish Owl ranges from 11 years to 13 years.