Lord Howe boobook than both the New Zealand and Norfolk Island subspecies. The Lord Howe boobook was restricted to Lord Howe Island where it inhabited the native forests as well as occurring around the settlements. Exactly when the Lord Howe boobook became extinct is uncertain. Boobook calls were apparently heard on the island until the 1950s, but during the 1920s boobooks from near Sydney in eastern Australia had been introduced, along with barn owls and masked owls, in an unsuccessful effort to control the black rats that had overrun the island. The rats had been accidentally introduced in June 1918 with the grounding
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