Tawny frogmouth Tawny frogmouth The tawny frogmouth ("Podargus strigoides") is a species of frogmouth native to and found throughout the Australian mainland and Tasmania. Tawny frogmouths are big-headed, stocky birds often mistaken for owls due to their nocturnal habits and similar colouring. The tawny frogmouth is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "mopoke", a common name for the southern boobook, whose call is often confused with the tawny frogmouth's. The tawny frogmouth was first described in 1801 by English naturalist John Latham. Its specific epithet is derived from the Latin "strix" meaning "owl" and "oides" meaning "form". Tawny frogmouths belong to the frogmouth
Southern boobook boobook" in 1801, writing about it in English, before giving it its scientific name, taking its species epithet from a local Dharug word for the bird. The species description was based on a painting by Thomas Watling of a bird—the holotype—in the Sydney district in the 1790s. John Gould described "Athene marmorata" in 1846 from a specimen in South Australia; this is regarded as a synonym. German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup classified the two taxa into subgenus "Spiloglaux" of a new genus "Ieraglaux" in 1852, renaming "S. boobook" to "Ieraglaux (Spiloglaux) bubuk". In his 1865 "Handbook to the Birds of