New Ireland boobook New Ireland boobook The New Ireland boobook ("Ninox variegata") also known as the Bismarck hawk owl or Bismarck boobook, is a small to medium-sized owl measuring in length. It is a dark rufous-brown above, with barred scapular feathers and variable amounts of spotting or barring on the wings and tail. Its underparts are whitish, with an unmarked pale throat, a dark barred upper breast and barring on the remainder of the underparts. Its face is dark brown, its eyes are brown or yellow, and its bill and legs are yellow. It is short-tailed and has heavy tarsi (the part of
Southern boobook treated Australian and New Zealand boobooks, along with several taxa from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as one species—"Ninox novaeseelandiae"—with 16 subspecies. In his 1968 book "Nightwatchmen of the Bush and Plain", Australian naturalist David Fleay observed that the boobooks from Tasmania more closely resembled those of New Zealand than those from mainland Australia, though he followed Mees in treating them as a single species. The southern boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the "" in 1999, though several authors, including Australian ornithologists Les Christidis and Walter Boles, continued to treat the three