Sri Lanka Bay Owl

The Sri Lanka bay owl is found on the island of Sri Lanka and in the Western Ghats of Kerala in south-western India. It was long treated as a subspecies of the Oriental bay owl but is now a full species because of its distinctive call, plumage and separate distribution. The cached species account gives no description of its plumage (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is secretive and rarely recorded, and it breeds in winter, when its song of several inflected whistles can be heard. SoIB 2023 treats it as endemic to the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka and a resident forest bird, but gives no trend or priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).