Jungle Owlet

The jungle owlet, or barred jungle owlet, is a small owl with a rounded head, no clear facial disc and fine barring all over. The upperparts are dark black-brown barred with white, with white and rufous patches on the wing coverts and chestnut-barred flight feathers, and the underparts are whitish or pale rufous barred black, with a whitish patch on the chin, breast and belly. The iris is yellow and the bill and legs greenish. The Western Ghats form is shorter-tailed and browner-headed and may deserve species status (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in habitats from scrub forest to deciduous and moist deciduous forest, and occurs up to 2,000m in parts of the Himalayas. It is often seen alone, in pairs or in small groups, and is mainly active at dawn and dusk, though it also calls and flies by day. It is usually found by its call, a rapid series of prao notes that swells and then fades before stopping abruptly. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Indian subcontinent and resident, finds its long-term trend stable and a current increase of about 4% a year, and rates it a Low conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).