The Brownest Boobook Of Em All - Hume's Boobook

South Andaman

I've seen quite a few people get lost in the excitement of a sighting and  do silly stuff like fall off moving vehicles, drop lens covers off a cliff and almost flip cars over. Well, this guy, the Hume's boobook gave me my silly moment for 2024 and I'm sure the people with me when I saw my first one surely had a chuckle about it when I wasn't looking.

These Hawk Owls are about the same size at the Andaman Boobook and are a threatened species due to habitat loss. The obvious difference between the two species is the colour of their feathers. These guys are mostly brown while their cousins sport the white and gold front. I’d say they show more brown than the Brown Boobooks found all over mainland India with perhaps some grey around the head. Their brown cousins have alternating white feathers on their mid sections. Another defining characteristic is the white spot around the forehead and beak if you can call it that at all. Looks more like a star shape to me from which the beak emerges at the center. Talk about a distinct physical trait. Pretty cool no?

Boobooks are Boobooks and I’m not gonna go back into what I wrote about in “Golden Eyes & Feathers” about them in general. Specifically, we saw three of these guys on the same night in South Andaman. The first was by himself (Pics : 1 – 10) and the second sighting was of a pair together (Pics : 11 – 12). All of them were a lot more cautious and jittery than their cousin, the Andaman Boobook. They did seem to care about us being around and mostly avoided looking at me although it was evident that they were keeping me in his field of vision most of the time till they bolted. I didn't get any head turns from these guys like I did from the Andaman Boobook.

I was shooting at 1/50 Shutter and 10K ISO and on shutter priority. My first guy changed perches three times in the short duration of 19 minutes that I had him for. He’d fly off as we got closer while taking pictures and make us start the whole process of repositioning light and walking up slow towards him. Yours truly, was tip-toeing, don't ask me why. Guy was watching me and I was tip-toeing up to him. So silly LOL. I got back to the hotel and laughed so hard at myself when I realized what I had been doing and how funny the sight must have been, me with camera in one hand, cane in another, croutched a little, trying to tip toe up to the owl on the tree while Mani and his sister watched probably thinking, "what the hell is he trying to do?" Just walking up to him slow would have sufficed.

It was all kinda worth it with no credit to the tip-toeing actually cause it gave me the chance to get pictures with different perspectives and backgrounds. I personally prefer night pics of owls without foliage cover behind the subject and this guy gave me that that off the bat and a lot of it from his perches. Now if only, he'd not avoid the direct look. Well, I guess you can't have it all. The second pair were just off and away just as we were repositioning the first time to never be seen again. All of them were nowhere as unbothered by our presence like the Andaman Boobook.

Boobooks are boobooks like I said but perhaps it’s just physically while their nature differs quite a lot between each other after all.