{"id":16059,"date":"2014-01-15T08:28:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T13:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/?p=16059"},"modified":"2016-04-19T10:09:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T14:09:12","slug":"whos-hooting-new-owl-discovered-by-the-sound-of-its-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/whos-hooting-new-owl-discovered-by-the-sound-of-its-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Who's Hooting? New Owl Discovered by the Sound of Its Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/OmaniOwl.jpg\" srcset=\"\" sizes=\"\" alt=\"The Omani Owl is the first new bird species found in the Western palearctic region in around 40 years, and was forst detected by its distictive hooting. Photo by Arnoud B. Van Den Berg\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption>The Omani Owl is the first new bird species found in the Western palearctic region in around 40 years, and was forst detected by its distictive hooting. <em>Photo by Arnoud B. Van Den Berg<\/em>.<\/figcaption>\n              <\/figure><\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-group sidebar-alignright sidebar-space order-bottom\"><div class=\"article-list list-style alignright\"><h2 class=\"article-list-header\">More From Living Bird<\/h2><ul><li class=\"article-item\"><div class=\"article-item-container\"><div class=\"article-item-media  content-living-bird-toc\"><figure class=\"article-item-media-ratio\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LB-TOC-Winter14-c.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LB-TOC-Winter14-c-720x329.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LB-TOC-Winter14-c-768x351.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LB-TOC-Winter14-c-480x219.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/LB-TOC-Winter14-c.jpg 918w\" sizes=\"\" alt=\"Bee Hummingbird by Rich Wagner\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure><\/div><div class=\"article-item-body\"><span class=\"article-item-header\">Living Bird Winter 2014\u2014Table of Contents<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"article-item\"><div class=\"article-item-container\"><div class=\"article-item-media  content-living-bird-toc\"><figure class=\"article-item-media-ratio\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-latest.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-latest.png 720w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-latest-240x180.png 240w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-latest-480x360.png 480w\" sizes=\"\" alt=\"Living Bird-latest issue\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure><\/div><div class=\"article-item-body\"><span class=\"article-item-header\">Living Bird Magazine\u2014Latest Issue<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/li><li class=\"article-item\"><div class=\"article-item-container\"><div class=\"article-item-media  content-article\"><figure class=\"article-item-media-ratio\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-acrhive.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-acrhive.png 720w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-acrhive-240x180.png 240w, https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/living-bird-acrhive-480x360.png 480w\" sizes=\"\" alt=\"Living Bird archives\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure><\/div><div class=\"article-item-body\"><span class=\"article-item-header\">Living Bird Magazine Archives<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-group sidebar-alignright sidebar-space order-bottom\"><!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code -->\r\n<span class=\"hs-cta-wrapper\" id=\"hs-cta-wrapper-096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da\">\r\n    <span class=\"hs-cta-node hs-cta-096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da\" id=\"hs-cta-096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da\">\r\n        <!--[if lte IE 8]><div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div><![endif]-->\r\n        <a href=\"http:\/\/cta-redirect.hubspot.com\/cta\/redirect\/95627\/096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da\" ><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"hs-cta-img\" id=\"hs-cta-img-096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da\" style=\"border-width:0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/95627\/096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da.png\"  alt=\"subscribe to Living Bird magazine\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\r\n    <\/span>\r\n    <script charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"https:\/\/js.hscta.net\/cta\/current.js\"><\/script>\r\n    <script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n        hbspt.cta.load(95627, '096b8ce3-0e2d-46c5-bbf7-12de3323c8da', {});\r\n    <\/script>\r\n<\/span>\r\n<!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code -->\r\n\r\n<\/div>\n\n<p>Who\u2019s hooting? Audio recordists serendipitously discover the Omani Owl\u2014and like many newly discovered species, this bird is already in need of conservation agnus Robb was in Arabia to listen to owls. But in nearly two decades of recording bird sounds, he had never heard hooting like this.<\/p>\n<p>Robb, a Scottish musician turned gatherer of bird audio, was in Oman last March to collect vocalizations of the Pallid Scops-Owl. It was part of the latest project by The Sound Approach, a European collective of bird audio recordists, to publish a book and CD package to be entitled Undiscovered Owls.<\/p>\n<p>And there, in the dry valley of a wadi in the Al Hajar mountains, Robb made a discovery: a different kind of owl, not a Pallid Scops, hooting so softly he couldn\u2019t hear it with his bare ears. But through headphones listening to a pair of remote microphones, he heard four nearly inaudible hoots in a three-part rhythm, almost like an owly version of the wedding march: Here comes the bride.<\/p>\n<p>Follow-up visits to Oman by Robb and fellow Sound Approach colleagues resulted in more recordings of this mystery owl. Then in May, Dutch audio recordist Arnoud van den Berg snapped the first photos of a brown, round-headed owl unlike any other known to inhabit the Arabian Peninsula. Back at their homes, Robb, van den Berg, and the rest of the Sound Approach team crosschecked their mystery owl recordings against the vocalizations of every other known species, using the Cornell Lab of Ornithology\u2019s Raven Pro sound-analysis software and tapping into audio archives such as the vast trove of online recordings at the Cornell Lab\u2019s Macaulay Library.<\/p>\n<p>In October, the birding journal Dutch Birding published their findings\u2014the scientific discovery of a new owl species, the Omani Owl (tentatively named Strix omanensis). It was the first new bird species found in the Western Palearctic region (an ecozone running from Europe to North Africa to Arabia) in 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn terms of North American birding, it\u2019d be like finding a new species in Mexico,\u201d says Macaulay Library assistant curator Matt Medler, who worked with Robb to archive the Omani Owl recordings at the Cornell Lab.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe decided that the best public place in the world for conserving sound-recordings was the Macaulay Library,\u201d says van den Berg, who has archived nearly 3,800 of his recordings at the Cornell Lab since the 1970s. \u201cWe know very well that its archiving is of the highest quality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet, the addition of a new bird species to the Macaulay archives was not an unusual occurrence. About five to seven new bird species are discovered every year, according to the Handbook of the Birds of the World. Just this past summer, the Macaulay Library archived recordings of 10 new bird species from Brazil, including the Campina Jay\u2014a new Cyanocorax species that measures more than a foot long, hardly an inconspicuous bird.<\/p>\n<p>But these new jays are already threatened with extinction due to habitat loss. Their entire range on the edge of Amazonian savannas could be cleared of natural vegetation within 30 to 50 years. Their plight reminds many ornithologists of the Po\u2019o-uli, a Hawaiian honeycreeper that immediately became one of the world\u2019s most endangered birds upon being discovered on the forested northeast slopes of a Maui volcano in 1973. The last wild Po\u2019o-uli was seen in 2004, and there are none in captivity.<\/p>\n<p>According to BirdLife International, 11 of 50 new bird species discovered between 2000 and 2009 are listed as endangered\u2014and 6 of those species are critically endangered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s entirely possible that there are undescribed bird species going extinct without ever being known to science,\u201d says Greg Budney, Macaulay Library audio curator.<\/p>\n<p>A sense of urgency for conservation drove Robb, van den Berg, and Sound Approach to rush the evidence for their new owl species to publication as fast as\u00a0possible, on the basis of audio recordings and photographs but without a traditional type specimen in hand for genetic analysis. \u201cWe had no idea, and still do not know, how rare the species is,\u201d says van den Berg. But his team does know that only six Omani Owls were heard hooting from the clifftops of a single wadi. And only officially recognized species qualify for threatened species listing by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. \u201cIt was no option to wait, as we wanted to have conservation measures in place as soon as possible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement of the discovery of the Omani Owl was met with initial disbelief by many ornithologists, which van den Berg says is understandable. \u201cNobody, including us, expected that a new species, other than a cryptic one split by DNA analysis, could still be hiding in the Western Palearctic sensu lato, a region that has been visited by many biologists and explorers in the past 100 to 150 years,\u201d he says. The discovery underscores the importance of audio monitoring for assessing bird populations even in wellstudied habitats. It\u2019s not that Magnus Robb was the first person, even the first birder, to stand in a wadi at night when an Omani Owl was hooting, but he was the first one there wearing headphones, with a microphone and the ability to amplify natural sounds several times louder than normal levels.<\/p>\n<p>Which begs the question: What else could be out there hooting in the night, as yet undetected?<br \/>\n<!--http:\/\/digital.livingbird.org\/livingbird\/winter_2014\/?pg=10--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who\u2019s hooting? Audio recordists serendipitously discover the Omani Owl\u2014and like many newly discovered species, this bird is already in need of conservation agnus Robb was in Arabia to listen to<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/stagaabnews\/whos-hooting-new-owl-discovered-by-the-sound-of-its-voice\/\" title=\"ReadWho&#8217;s Hooting? New Owl Discovered by the Sound of Its Voice\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_birdpress_living_bird_toc":0,"_birdpress_living_bird_toc_title":"","_birdpress_featured_image":false,"_birdpress_hero_toggle":false,"_birdpress_hero_type":"image","_birdpress_hero_image_type":"image","_birdpress_hero_style":"default","_birdpress_hero_ratio":"","_birdpress_hero_h1":"","_birdpress_hero_media_id":0,"_birdpress_hero_media_array_id":[],"_birdpress_hero_media_array":[],"_birdpress_hero_media":0,"_birdpress_hero_video_id":0,"_birdpress_hero_video":0,"_birdpress_hero_youtube":"","_birdpress_hero_content":true,"_birdpress_hero_byline":"","_birdpress_hero_byline_bottom":"","_birdpress_hero_button_link":"","_birdpress_hero_button_text":"","_birdpress_hero_button_color":"","_birdpress_hero_date":false,"original_guid":"","_birdpress_hide_search":false,"_birdpress_page_width":"","_birdpress_global_cta":false,"_birdpress_widget_sidebar":"","_birdpress_next_article":0,"_birdpress_next_article_title":"","_birdpress_prev_article":0,"_birdpress_prev_article_title":"","_birdpress_sub_navigation_id":0,"_birdpress_sub_navigation":"","_birdpress_sub_navigation_title":false,"_birdpress_anchor_navigation_id":0,"_birdpress_anchor_navigation":"","_birdpress_postType":"both","_birdpress_categoryID":0,"_birdpress_tagID":0,"_birdpress_parentPostID":0,"_birdpress_parentPostTitle":"","_birdpress_menuID":0,"_birdpress_menuName":"","_birdpress_listHeader":"","_birdpress_listLayout":"card-display","_birdpress_listColumns":"","_birdpress_maxItems":12,"_birdpress_listPaginate":true,"_birdpress_displaySort":true,"_birdpress_sortOrder":"DESC","_birdpress_sortBy":"date","_birdpress_listID":"","_birdpress_listClass":"","_birdpress_displayImages":true,"_birdpress_displayCaptions":false,"_birdpress_displayExcerpts":false,"_birdpress_attTop":"","_birdpress_attBottom":"","_birdpress_showLogos":false,"_birdpress_post_logo":0,"_wds_title":"","_wds_metadesc":"","_wds_focus-keywords":"","_wds_meta-robots-adv":",,,","_wds_meta-robots-noindex":false,"_wds_meta-robots-nofollow":false,"_wds_meta-robots-index":false,"_wds_meta-robots-follow":false,"_wds_autolinks-exclude":false,"_wds_canonical":"","_wds_opengraph":[],"_wds_twitter":[],"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_topic":0,"wds_primary_content-format":0,"wds_primary_cornell-lab-project":0,"wds_primary_host-project":0,"wds_primary_read-more-tag":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[998,1043],"content-format":[1055],"cornell-lab-project":[1069],"host-project":[1137],"read-more-tag":[],"class_list":["post-16059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","topic-news-and-features","topic-science-conservation-news-and-features","content-format-article","cornell-lab-project-living-bird-magazine","host-project-living-bird"],"metadata":{"associated-posts":[""],"wpa_off":[null],"_edit_lock":["1461074822:4"],"_edit_last":["4"],"_thumbnail_id":["24598"],"wdsi_message_id":[""],"wdsi_do_not_show":[""],"custom-byline":["<h5>By 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