Sooty Owls are dark, sooty grey, with a prominent, heart-shaped
facial mask. The face is light to mid-grey, while the fringe of
the facial mask is dark-grey. The front is scalloped dark and
light-grey, while the back is all dark-grey, with white spots.
The folded wings show a white shoulder patch. The short, sturdy
legs are feathered light-grey, with faint darker grey rings.
Race "multipunctata" is lighter grey overall than nominate race
"tenebricosa" and has more white spots on the back. The irises
are black. The bill is light-grey, the talons are dark-grey.
We follow the view of Pizzey & Knight in considering the Great
Sooty Owl ("Tyto tenebricosa") and the Lesser Sooty Owl ("Tyto
multipunctuata") to be conspecific, and will treat the two as
two races of the same species below.
The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and
specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found,
based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to
ebird.org
.
The global distribution of the Sooty Owl is available
HERE
.
Sooty Owls are found in West Papua, New Guinea and Australia.
There are two races of Sooty Owls in Australia.
Nominate race "tenebricosa"
(the Greater Sooty Owl) occurs from just northward of Brisbane,
QLD, along the South-east coastal and near-coastal fringe,
all the way to Melbourne, VIC (except Wilson's Promontory).
The range of race "multipuncatata" (the Lesser Sooty Owl) is
limited to the coastal fringe and the tablelands around
Cairns, in tropical northern QLD, from just to the North
of the Burdekin River at Townsville to about Cooktown in the
North. They also occur on Magnetic Island off Townsville, QLD.
Race "tenebricosa"
is found in densely vegetated, tall wet forest (often in gullies),
while race "multipunctata" lives in tropical rainforest.
We first spotted a Sooty Owl, nominate race "tenebricosa",
in Bunya
Mountains NP, QLD, in March 2016. This location is on
the north-western edge of the race's range. A bird was seen
again on the same roost in June 2017.
More Sooty Owl sound recordings are available at
xeno-canto.org
.
These pages are largely based on our own observations and those of our
contributors.
The structure of these bird pages is explained HERE. For more salient facts on any bird species
please refer to a field guide.