Serendipity 'saves' Powerful Owl

There are many unknowns about Powerful Owls locally. For starters, how many are there? Where are they? What conservation measures are needed? Here's your chance to help build an accurate picture of all things Powerful, and to keep things that way!

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Mick Atzeni
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Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2005 9:08 pm

Serendipity 'saves' Powerful Owl

Post by Mick Atzeni »

On Wednesday, 8/8/07 - while we were still relishing the earlier news of a Masked Owl being seen and photographed in East Toowoomba - a member of the public brought a dead Powerful Owl into the USQ Biology Department around lunch time. He found it while driving up the Toowoomba range, about 250m past the saddle. Now the lab manager in the Biology Dpt is none other than Pat McConnell, our Records Officer!

But the coincidences and drama had already started 3hrs earlier. Liz Houston, a friend at DPI&F with a passing interest in birds, had rung me around morning tea to say she'd seen a large, grey owl-like bird dead on the range on her way to work. Way too big for a frogmouth, she added emphatically. And certainly not a coucal!

With Redwood Park on the other side of the highway, the alarm bells were immediately ringing. Suspecting one of Redwood's resident Powerful Owls had been killed, I rang and asked Ken McKeown, who lives nearby at Table Top Estate, to drive up and check it out. He did so straight away, but there was no sign of it. We concluded someone had probably picked it up. I was about to call Pat, when I received an email message from him about a dead Powerful Owl!

But what were the odds of such a trophy even being handed in? And then landing right in the hands of Pat?!!

That's one very lucky (albeit unlucky) Powerful Owl, which will now serve a distinguished role in education and research at the Qld Museum.







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Michael Atzeni
7 Woden St, Murphys Creek 4352
Mob: 0499 395 485
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