Auckland Barn Owls

[Brendan T]

This one is an understandably sensitive topic given the xenophobia towards these beautiful birds, so I don't necessarily expect anyone to reply publicly, but if anyone has some info they're happy to share and feels like a private message would be appropriate, I would really appreciate you reaching out.

I'm planning to drive a few backcountry roads around Bombay, Ramarama, and Pōkeno (just over the Waikato border, I know) at night (as these suburbs have been mentioned publicly before, and it's a rather large, vague area, it's hopefully okay to list these out), obviously sticking to public roads, just to see if I can find some Barn Owls. I'm perfectly content to putter around over the course of a few nights without precise info, as the joy is in the journey, not the destination; that being said, if anyone does have any exact locations in that area that they'd be happy to message to me, I'd be very appreciative, and I'd be respectful of the sensitive nature of the information.

[Davidthomas]

Hi Brendan,

I have no information to offer I’m afraid but if you have any luck I’d love to know where you see them.

David

[bombaydave2]

Hi Brendan. Txt me. Dave. 0212619670. I can let you know where some recent sightings have been. Clear night with good moonlight best.

[Brendan T]

To report back, my wife and I were ultimately unsuccessful looking for Barn Owls in the Bombay general area last night, but a big thank you to Dave for the information he provided me - we'll make some more attempts when time allows.

It was a good, clear night with almost zero cloud-cover, and a mostly full moon (waxing gibbeous, ~85% illumination). We spent about 45 min at each of 5 candidate locations we selected, 3 provided by Dave, 2 that simply looked like promising habitat. Playback was used judiciously at each site, a single call played on arrival at each site, followed by a second ~20 min later - my personal conviction being that anything more than 2 or 3 calls per site being too much. There was no response.

There were plenty of these pests, though:

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I think we sighted 6 total, plus one feral cat. No rats, mustelids, or ruru were sighted, though one ruru called in response to the Barn Owl playback.

Edited to add: a possum called ("screeched") in response to the Barn Owl playback too - unfamiliarity with either species could cause confusion as there is some surface similarities, but alas it was indeed a possum call.

[Brendan T]

I made another unsuccessful attempt the other night, trying some new locations and repeating some old ones that had shown some promise.

While I intend to keep trying somewhat regularly, I'll only report back here if successful now - but for those interested in knowing, I am attempting to put a decent amount of consistency and regularity into the search, so you can assume radio silence is due to lack of success rather than lack of trying.