Behaviour
These owls typically hunt from perches where they sit still and wait for prey. When perched they flick their tails from side to side rapidly and more excitedly when prey is being chased. It was observed in one study that nearly 60% of prey were lizards(including skinks), 15% rodents, 2% birds and the remaining invertebrates and frogs. When nesting the male hunted and fed the female at nest and the young were fed by the female. The young fledge after 30–32 days.
The peak courtship season is in January to February during which time they are very responsive to call playback with a mixture of song and territorial calls.
They appear to be strongly diurnal although not very active after 10 AM, often hunting during daytime. On cold winter mornings they bask on the tops of tall trees.
Filial cannibalism by males has been observed.
Read more about this topic: Forest Owlet
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)