If you have heard at night a deep Whoo-hoo it could be the Powerful Owl, Ninox strenua. It is the largest Australian nocturnal bird and is listed as vulnerable in NSW. Birds Australia has a public call out to help locate and monitor breeding pairs and Birds In Backyards will train volunteers. For a lot more detail please use my links and to report a sighting or join in volunteering please go here
As I am not often able to see outside of a book the birds and animals I like to depict in my art I then frequent museums to observe the preserved. A favourite is the intimate and historically important Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney - where presently they have a long-nosed bandicoot on display... so I strongly encourage a visit!
They estimate to have 9000 bird studyskins that were mainly collected in the late 1800s. I am currently drawing some of the birds found along the greenway, of course, and here I believe is a not so typically posed tawny frogmouth. It was common that the taxidermists and engravers of the time had also never seen these specimens alive and in real situ.
2 comments:
What a wonderful drawing and great to have such a museum, the birds there sit even longer as normal....
very true and they are not the 9000 I mentioned which rest in the drawers as skins only. This victorian museum has many other extraordinary things and it would take a lifetime time to explore everything.
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