Bird world hails return of a long lost friend now renamed the Omani Owl

A LONG lost species of owl has been rediscovered in remote mountain deserts after intrepid detective work by birdwatchers.

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Omani Owl rediscovered in the desert

Only by capturing the elusive owl in its desolate retreats in Oman were scientists able to match the bird with a tatty 135-year-old specimen in the Natural History Museum.

Amazingly, the team was able to lure the owl by using a decoy painted by one of the world's most famous bird artists so that they could get its vital feather and blood samples for DNA analysis.

After releasing the captured bird, Magnus Robb and his team were able to confirm it was a species that was thought to have vanished off scientific radar.

It is now getting a name change and will be known as Omani Owl.

The story of the rediscovery of this rare and little known species, which was once called Hume's Owl, emerged over the weekend after the publication of a scientific paper which reveals some of the most exciting and intrepid field work in years.

Magnus and the Sound Approach - a team set up by Mark Constantine, founder of Lush Cosmetics, to study the songs and calls of birds - set off to the remote deserts of Oman two years ago to get recordings of the little known birds of this rarely-visited region.

But when they began analysing unusual owl calls echoing in the desert night, they soon realised they were breaking new scientific ground.

At first, they thought they had discovered a species new to science, which they called Strix omanensis.

But there was a twist, when a different group of researchers began looking at museum specimens of another type of desert owl, throwing up many unanswered identification questions, it became necessary for Magnus and his team to go back to the mountains of Oman and attempt to catch their owl to get its DNA profile.

The team were lucky.

By using recordings and a decoy painted by renown artist Killian Mullarney, the bird was drawn into a net where seven small feathers and blood could be taken for DNA analysis.

These samples were later compared to a "tatty" specimen of the old Hume's Owl - scientific name Strix butleri - in the Natural History Museum's bird collection in Tring, Hertfordshire, which had been originally collected in Pakistan in 1878.

Now it can be revealed there are two distinctive owls living across the arid wastes from Israel to Iran.

One is being called Desert Owl, the other Omani Owl.