Southern boobook age. Brushtail possums ("Trichosurus" spp.) and introduced cats and rats raid the nests for nestlings and eggs, and raptors such as the brown goshawk ("Accipiter fasciatus"), grey goshawk ("Accipiter novaehollandiae"), Australian masked owl ("Tyto novaehollandiae"), and probably powerful owl ("Ninox strenua") seize young birds. Juvenile southern boobooks are at greater risk after bushfires and have perished after being tangled up in dodder ("Cassytha") or bidgee-widgee ("Acaena novae-zelandiae"). The southern boobook generally preys on mice, insects, particularly nocturnal beetles and moths, and birds the size of a house sparrow ("Passer domesticus"). A higher proportion of its diet is invertebrates compared with
Ninox novaeseelandiae ocellata southern boobooks may directly correlate with rainfall, with the paler species being found in areas of lower rainfall, indicating the semi arid regions of Australia (the range of the ocellata sub species). The boobook has a very distinctive double hoot ‘boo-book’ with the second note being lower. This call has earned it the common name of ‘mopoke’. Subspecies ocellata tends to inhabit the warmer areas of Australia, from north-western New South Wales/western Queensland spanning across to Western Australia, although it is rarely found in the more arid regions. The boobook is found in a wide variety of habitats, from semi-arid