Arnoud and Cecilia’s visit to Goa for Brown Fish Owl coincided exactly with the start of courtship. During the weeks before their visit, the staff at the Backwoods Camp had not heard the owls at all. Besides solo hooting and duets, Arnoud recorded one other call type, a fairly short, descending wail. CD3-62 is his best example. In CD3-63, the owls fly closer after one gives a wail. The same also happened on another occasion.

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CD3-62: Brown Fish Owl Bubo zeylonensis Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary, Goa, India, 03:58, 15 January 2013. Wailing call. 130115.AB.035844.11

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CD3-63: Brown Fish Owl Bubo zeylonensis Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary, Goa, India, 05:31, 15 January 2013. Hooting duet and wailing call. 130115.AB.053100.02

We have never recorded any wails of Turkish Fish Owl with certainty, but we have often heard them giving a sibilant whistle, especially the female. This seems to be a soliciting call.CD3-64was recorded from a boat at dawn. Two adults were sitting close together in their roosting tree above a nest hole, possibly trying to reassure their nestling. The adult that calls more frequently is noticeably higher-pitched than the other. We assume that she is the female.

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CD3-64: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi ‘Little Canyon’, Oymapinar Baraji, Antalya, Turkey, 06:20, 11 May 2012. Soliciting calls of two adults. Background: Great Tit Parus major. 120511.AB.062000.11

A call with a similar hissing timbre but inflected sharply upwards at the end featured in Arnoud’s very first Turkish Fish Owl recording. Shortly before the recording started, a juvenile had flown down from the cliff to a nearby tree and was hanging upside down in the top. This looked rather precarious, and after a while Arnoud decided to see whether he should do something about it. As soon as he started to approach, he noticed the adult perched in a tree 20 m away giving the calls in CD3-65, with faint contributions from the juvenile in the background.

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CD3-65: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi Antalya, Turkey, 21:07, 13 July 2009. Hissing call of adult with rising inflection, possibly soliciting call. Background: presumed juvenile and mountain river. 090713.AB.210726.02

After a while the adult flew off, giving a strange sort of coughing sound (CD3-66). This was so different from most fish owl sounds that until I researched this chapter I was in doubt that it belonged to the owl. Then I read Pukinskiy’s (1993) description of warning calls in the doerriesi form of Blakiston’s Fish Owl: “A slight disturbance (such as a badger or dog near a nest tree) will evoke akkhe sound, which sounds like the cough of someone with a cold.” Jonathan Slaght sent me an example, confirming the similarity, and described situations when he had heard it. Once a juvenile doerriesi was calling from the nest when a group of crows flew overhead. The resident female, roosting in a tree nearby, gave the cough and the juvenile shut up immediately.

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CD3-66: Turkish Fish OwlBubo semenowiAntalya, Turkey, 21:07, 13 July 2009. Warning ‘cough’ of an adult, while juvenile hangs upside down from branch. Background: mountain river. 090713.AB.210726.02

Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi, adult, Akseki, Antalya, Turkey, 14 July 2009 (Arnoud B van den Berg). Bringing fish to fledgling. Same family as in CD3-65 & 66.

Another time Jonathan was sitting near a nest tree before dark with the female on the nest (not incubating yet, just preparing). When it became dark and the male arrived, the female emerged from the nest cavity. She knew Jonathan was there but the male did not. She looked in his direction and gave the cough. The adult Turkish Fish Owl in Arnoud’s recording had good reason to give a cough, with its young dangling upside down from a branch, and a human standing nearby. 

Two nights after its ‘dangle’, Arnoud and Cecilia saw the same juvenile Turkish Fish Owl perched the right way up. It had come down from the cliff and was in a large pine, where it spent the rest of the night preening and sleeping, and sometimes staring at the sky. In CD3-67, this juvenile was responding to Arnoud’s imitation of its calls at a range of only 10-15 m. Despite the proximity, it was barely audible without the use of a parabolic microphone. 

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CD3-67: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi Antalya, Turkey, 21:14, 15 July 2009. Hissing calls of a juvenile with rising inflection. Background: mountain river. 090715.AB.211442.01

Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi, Akseki, Antalya, Turkey, 15 July 2009 (Arnoud B van den Berg). Same juvenile as in CD3-67.

Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi, Akseki, Antalya, Turkey, 14 July 2009 (Arnoud B van den Berg). Same juvenile as in CD3-67 but quiet after dawn.

Three years later, Arnoud collected many more recordings of a juvenile, but one that was still in the nest. During long vigils on the crag opposite the ‘Little Canyon’ nest he recorded many begging calls (eg, CD3-68). These calls lack any upward inflection, and resemble the hissing whistles we heard from the roosting adults (cf, CD3-64), tending to go down a little towards the end. The recording starts with wingbeats of an adult arriving at the nest, and after the juvenile’s loud first begging call, you can hear a few of the adult’s faint calls at a faster tempo. These are probably feeding calls, as they often featured when an adult arrived with food at the nest.

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CD3-68: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi ‘Little Canyon’, Oymapinar Baraji, Antalya, Turkey, 02:49, 14 May 2012. Begging calls of juvenile and feeding calls of adult. Background: wind in trees. 120514.AB.024900.11

In 2014, it was finally time for other members of the Sound Approach team, who had previously taken background roles, to go and experience the Turkish Fish Owls with Arnoud and Cecilia. On the morning of 13 May we chartered a boat that would take us to both nesting sites at Oymapinar Baraji. We only expected to see the owls, not hear them, so we were delighted to be able to make some recordings. At the second breeding site in the ‘Grand Canyon’ on the north side of the reservoir we saw an adult in the entrance to a nest. From inside, we could clearly hear chittering of a large juvenile (CD3-69). Superimposed on the chittering we could hear feeding calls of a second adult, probably the female.

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CD3-69: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi ‘Grand Canyon’, Oymapinar Baraji, Antalya, Turkey, 07:43, 13 May 2014. Chittering of a large juvenile, with feeding calls of an adult, probably female. Background: Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs. 140513.

The pair in the ‘Grand Canyon’ receives fewer visitors than the one in the ‘Little Canyon’. In CD3-70, an adult of this pair bill-snaps before moving a few metres to a different perch. I suspect it was simply uneasy about the presence of our boat, and the bill-snapping was directed at us. Arnoud had once heard the sound before, when he surprised a young fish owl below its breeding cliff, but on that occasion he did not manage to record the sound.

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CD3-70: Turkish Fish Owl Bubo semenowi ‘Grand Canyon’, Oymapinar Baraji, Antalya, Turkey, 07:53, 13 May 2014. Bill-snapping of an adult, probably male, perched outside nesting cave with juvenile and another adult inside. 140513.MR.075328.21

When we work with such a rare species at night, progress in documenting calls and especially understanding their ‘meaning’ can be slow. Sometimes we make a leap forward, but occasionally we have to take a step back. Four years after our first review of Turkish Fish Owl calls (van den Berg et al 2010), we now know that a high-pitched and rather Little Owl Athenevidalii-like keew call (figs 2 & 4 in van den Berg et al 2010) is in fact the excitement call of Eurasian Scops Owl Otus scops (cf, CD2-23 & CD2-24). In retrospect we should have been more suspicious, because Arnoud heard the keew call for a long period high up across a river but never managed to see the caller. He never heard a scops owl hooting at this site but it was numerous in a village a few km down river.

We are still only starting to understand Turkish Fish Owl. There is so much more to find out, and adventurous birders can join the effort. Clearly we need to locate more pairs, and to understand more about their ecological requirements. In the whole world we know of only 12 occupied territories. In Turkey those include eight in Antalya province and three further east (Soner Bekir pers comm); in Iran just one pair was reported recently in Hormozgan province (van Maanen & Cuyten 2012). Looking at outdated distribution maps for ‘Brown Fish Owl’ (eg, in Ali & Ripley 1981 and König et al 2008), I imagined Pakistan could be a stronghold. Roberts (1991), however, could only name four 20th century records, the last dating from 1980. Even if we were to assume that there are really five to 10 times the known number of pairs in Turkey and a similar number in Iran, Turkish Fish Owl remains a dangerously rare owl.

Turkish Fish Owl is larger than other ‘Brown Fish Owls’ and also much paler, especially on the head and upperparts. It inhabits more arid habitat, using cliffs rather than trees for nesting cavities. Sometimes it even nests far from permanent water. In southern Iran, the pair discovered by two Dutch birders in January 2004 was nesting in a completely arid valley, and must have been feeding among coastal mangroves 2 km away (van Diek et al 2004, Magnus Ullman pers comm). An hour after Rob Felix and Frank Willems discovered this pair, a Eurasian Eagle-Owl hooted just 100 m from their hole. The close proximity of two large owl species suggests that suitable nest sites were scarce in the area.

Arnoud brought back five feathers from Turkey and gave them to Peter de Knijff for genetic analysis. Peter sequenced a fragment of 300 base pairs for cytochrome b, compared them with sequences for Brown Fish Owl (not semenowi) and Buffy Fish Owl B ketupu in Wink et al (2008), and found three consistent differences from both, identical in all five feathers. The Turkish birds differed from both species by 2%. Unfortunately, Wink used sequences from captive ‘Brown Fish Owls’, and it is uncertain where they or their ancestors came from. Future comparisons will have to address this problem, and should also verify whether ‘Bengal Fish Owl’ is genetically distinct.

The very few Turkish Fish Owls surviving in southern Iran highlight some important gaps in our knowledge. Besides observations of pairs in Hormozgan province in 2004-2005 and 2012, local taxidermists received specimens from Fars and Bushehr provinces within the last couple of years (Khaleghizadeh 2011). Despite contacting several people that have seen fish owls in Hormozgan, I could find nobody who has ever heard them. When making taxonomic judgements based on sounds, it is always best to have examples from as many different locations as possible, so I am keen to confirm that Iranian semenowi sound just like those from Turkey, whenever this should prove possible.

Although we have chosen to call it Turkish Fish Owl, the species was actually described from an Iranian specimen. Nikolai Zarudny, an explorer and zoologist of Ukrainian origin who shot two in Iran, was the first to realise that these western ‘brown fish owls’ were different. Zarudny only knew that semenowi occurred in Khuzestan and the eastern slopes of the Zagros range, so perhaps he had not seen specimens already collected in Israel, Syria and Turkey in the 19th century (Ebels 2002). The scientific name semenowi honours Peter Petrovich Semenow, a noted explorer of Central Asia (Zarudny 1905).

Even in the 21st century, new owl species are still being discovered. Most are small species from poorly explored parts of the tropics: scops owls, pygmy owls Glaucidium and the like. When work started on this book, Arabian Scops Owl O pamelae from 1937 was the last new Western Palearctic owl. Surprisingly, one medium sized WP owl was still awaiting discovery in the genus that has Tawny Owl Strix aluco in its midst, the first named genus of owls, Strix.

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