Barking Owl

Barking Owls are nocturnal carnivores and have a very broad diet in the wild which they hunt for at night. Although they have been observed hunting in the late afternoon. They will feed on small to medium sized mammals, reptiles and insects. Common prey items in the wild would be mice, rabbits and possums.

Barking Owls like to live in forests and woodlands with large trees. They require big tree hollows for nesting and foliage cover for roosting. They can have a home range of over 1400 hectares per breeding pair, and pairs do not like to overlap home ranges.

The Barking Owl is found in most parts of mainland Australia. They are also found in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

Barking Owls will mate for life.

Breeding season occurs from August to October. Females will lay 2-3 white eggs in a nest at the bottom of a tree hollow once a year, and the eggs are incubated for 28 days. Juveniles will stay in the nest for 45 days before fledging.

Barking Owls are listed as Vulnerable in New South Wales and Critically Endangered in Victoria.
in 1997 there were roughly 50 breeding pairs left in the wild in Victoria, but we haven’t had an update since, with subsequent surveys showing no presence of them in the habitats surveyed.

The Barking Owl has long been Victoria’s most threatened species of owl.

The biggest threat to Barking Owls is habitat loss and degradation, in particular the loss of large trees with large hollows. Suitable trees can take up to 200 years to grow, so losing them has meant they’ve not only lost vital homes for shelter and nesting, but also many of many of their prey species have also declined because they too rely on these trees.