Morepork they conceded the two were easily distinguishable in appearance, so maintained the three as subspecies; the Tasmanian boobook only diverged by 2.7% from the other two, while the powerful and rufous owls diverged by 4.4% from each other. Leading from this, the southern boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the "", however several authors, including Les Christidis and Walter Boles, contested that the data had been misinterpreted from the Norman study, which had not sampled any Australian mainland boobooks at all. They treated the three taxa (southern, Tasmanian boobooks, and moreporks) as a
Morepork have hollows. Although their main hunting technique is perch-and-pounce, they are agile birds with a swift, goshawk-like wing action and the ability to maneuver rapidly when pursuing prey or hawking for insects. They hunt a variety of animals – mainly large invertebrates including scarab and huhu beetles, moths and caterpillars, spiders, grasshoppers, and in New Zealand, wetas. They also take almost any suitably sized prey, particularly small birds, rats, and mice. They can find suitable food in pine forests as well as native forest. A widespread and generally common species, morepork is listed as being a species of least concern