The Brown Wood Owl (Strix leptogrammica) is an owl which is a resident breeder in south Asia from India and Sri Lanka east to western Indonesia and south China. This species is a part of the family of owls known as typical owls (Strigidae), which contains most species of owl. It belongs to the earless owl genus Strix.
The Brown Wood Owl is medium large (45–57 cm), with upperparts uniformly dark brown, with faint white spotting on the shoulders. The underparts are buff with brown streaking. The facial disc is brown or rufous, edged with white and without concentric barring, and the eyes are dark brown. There is a white neckband. The sexes are similar.
The call is a (hoo) hoo hoo HOO or a deep goke-goke-ga-LOOO or a loud scream. The alarm call is a bark, wow-wow. Some subspecies are known to produce distinct vocalizations; they are also different in appearance and parapatric, and might be distinct species: The northern Strix (leptogrammica) newarensis group (Himalayan Wood-owl; present subspecies newarensis, ticehursti, laotiana and caligata) which occur from the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir east to Taiwan have a soft low to-hooh not unlike a rock dove cooing. S. (l.) bartelsi (Bartels's Wood-owl), Javan Wood-owl from Java, the southeasternmost taxon, has a loud, forceful, single HOOH! with long pauses between calls.
It is an uncommon resident bird of dense forests. This species is very nocturnal but it can often be located by the small birds that mob it while it is roosting in a tree. It feeds mainly on small mammals birds and reptiles. It nests in a hole in a tree or on a forked trunk, laying two eggs.
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“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
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Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
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To wood and field.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,
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And frog peeps out o’ the fountain.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)