Powerful Owl Ninox strenua

Length 50–60 cm; wingspan 110–140 cm; weight: male 1.45 kg, female 1.25 kg.

Most commonly seen roosting during the day, the Powerful Owl is often seen singly, in pairs or family groups of three or four.  The species typically roosts in the shade of the dense foliage of a tree, usually on bare horizontal branch, up to 20 metres above the ground.  Roosting adults are often seen clutching the remains of partly eaten prey in their talons.  Roosts are usually betrayed by distinctive signs on the ground or foliage below, such as large patches of creamy-white excreta, or pellets, bones and fur littering the ground.  Roosting birds are easily approached by day, but the species is shy and difficult to observe at night.  When in flight, the silhouette of the Powerful Owl is distinctive, combining long, broad, rounded and deeply fingered wings with a large, sturdy body and a longish tail, gently rounded at the tip when spread.  The flight is rather slow, with deep laboured wing-beats interspersed with glides.

HABITAT
Throughout most of its range this species typically inhabits open and tall wet sclerophyll forest, mainly in sheltered, densely vegetated gullies containing old-growth forest (where they breed in hollows in large trees) with a dense understorey, often near permanent streams.  Such habitats are often dominated by Mountain Grey Gum, Mountain Ash, Manna Gum or Narrow-leafed Peppermint.  They occasionally also occur in rainforest in gullies surrounded by sclerophyll forest or woodland.  Powerful Owls also occur in adjacent open dry sclerophyll forests and woodlands, such as those dominated by box–ironbark eucalypts, Candlebark, Messmate or riparian River Red Gums; they sometimes also occur in open casuarina and cypress-pine forests.  Though they probably require large tracts of forest, they sometimes occur in fragmented landscapes, such as remnant patches in farmland, parkland or suburban areas, or mosaics of logged and unlogged forest.  They have also been recorded among regrowth and, occasionally in mature pine plantations.  They usually breed and roost in large trees within tall, wet sclerophyll forest, but mostly hunt in adjacent areas of open forest or woodland, in post-logging regrowth, or in farmland adjoining forests.

DISTRIBUTION
Endemic to eastern and south-eastern mainland Australia, mainly on the seaward side of the Great Divide.

STATUS

• Vulnerable in Queensland
• Vulnerable in New South Wales
• Vulnerable in Victoria
• Endangered in South Australia

THREATS
Powerful Owls are adversely affected by the clearfelling of forests and the consequent conversion of those forests into open landscapes, but the species may persist in forests that have been lightly or selectively logged.

MOVEMENTS
Resident or sedentary.

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