Tawny Fish Owl by Ken _Gilliland

Poser • Animals • posted on Apr 13, 2015

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Description

The Tawny Fish Owl is found in subtropical to temperate forests in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, and Vietnam. They eat mostly fish, crabs, shrimps, crayfish and some frogs. They are at least partially diurnal in activity, with daytime activity mainly occurring in the late afternoon and they may be seen actively hunting before nightfall especially on cloudy days. However, before the afternoon they tend to be sluggish during the day. If disturbed or threatened, these owls tend to sit tight and not take flight. Like most owls, they usually choose inconspicuous perches during the day to avoid detection. They usually hunt by swooping down to the water capture fish from the surface and are reportedly surprisingly active in their hunting style and are not dissimilar in the hunting methods to those used by diurnal fish-hunting raptors such as fish eagles, sea eagles and ospreys. Unlike fish-eating diurnal raptors who will not submerge any part of their body while hunting, fish owls will wade into shallow water, hunting on foot. Unlike most owls, the feathers of fish owls are not soft to the touch and they lack the comb and hair-like fringes to the primaries, which allow other owls to fly silently in order to ambush their prey. Due to the lack of these feather-specializations, fish owl wing beats make sounds. The lack of a deep facial disc in fish owls is another indication of the unimportance of sound relative to vision in these owls, as facial disc depth (as well as inner ear size) are directly related to how important sound is to an owl's hunting behavior. Similar adaptations, such as unwillingness to submerge beyond their legs and lack of sound-muffling feathers are also seen in the African fishing owls, which do not seem to be directly related. Rendered in Poser 2014 GD without any postwork. Models used include TerraDome2 (rDNA),Songbird ReMix Perching Places and Songbird Remix Owls of the World2 (by what's his name)