I have received this note from Coral Rowston, a friend of mine who is the manager of the national park on Norfolk Island. She has observed interesting behaviour by the Norfolk Island Boobooks – they appear to be hunting diurnally, and larger prey than is usual for Boobooks. See the note below. Any recommendations for who might be a good person for Coral to liaise with about this?
Greg Roberts
“Hey Greg Not sure if you’ve seen the new photos on our parks facebook page – but really interesting and hoping you might be able to help with some good contacts or info. We are observing some behaviour which seems really different to me. A classic is the images of the male bringing the nesting female a rat in the middle of the day. I am no bird expert, but I had always thought of boobooks as nocturnal – and to have collected a rodent in the middle of the day is also really strange – most activity during the night for our rats too. I will get around to doing a more serious literature search for owl behaviour stuff – but access to such resources is a little limited on this little island, so wondering if you knew of anyone who might be into owl behaviour and might be willing to talk to me about understanding the images we are getting. We’re pretty sure there is at least one chick in the nest, so also curious as to the provision of mammalian food. Penny Olsen always told me that they only ate insects – but might take something larger when breeding. There is also the concept that owls eat prey whole. We certainly now have evidence of taking a rat into the nest and not being eaten whole. We also have a blurry image of the chick witting on the rat in the nest box. It is really early days in our image collection, but would so love to know more about the theory behind what we are observing.”
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