page_title: Buffy fish owl
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Buffy fish owl / Description
caption_attribution_description: Bubo ketupuEnglish: Buffy Fish Owl
context_page_description: The buffy fish owl, also known as the Malay fish owl, is a fish owl in the family Strigidae. It is native to Southeast Asia and lives foremost in tropical forests and wetlands. Due to its wide distribution and assumed stable population, it is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 2004.
context_section_description: The buffy fish owl is buff brown with darker tawny brown feathers on the back. Its face is paler and it has light brown eyebrows. With an adult size of 40 to 48 cm (16 to 19 in) and a weight of 1,028 to 2,100 g (2.3 to 4.6 lb), it is the smallest fish owl species.
  Like all fish owls, the buffy fish owl has prominent ear tufts on the sides of the head. Its wing feathers and tail are broadly barred yellowish and dark brown. The wings are distinctly rounded in shape. The underparts are a yellowish brown, rich buff or fulvous with broad blackish shaft stripes. Its long legs are not feathered.
  The fish owls have large, powerful, and curved talons and a longitudinal sharp keel underneath the middle claw with all having sharp cutting edges that are very much like those of eagle owls. Unlike fish-eating diurnal raptors, they do not submerge any part of their body while hunting, preferring only to put their feet into the water, although fish owls wade into the shallows. The feathers of fish owls are not soft to the touch and lack the comb and hair-like fringes to the primaries, which allow other owls to fly silently in order to ambush their prey. Due to the lack of these feather-specializations, fish owl wing beats make sounds. The lack of a deep facial disc in fish owls is another indication of the unimportance of sound relative to vision in these owls, as facial disc depth (as well as inner ear size) are directly related to how important sound is to an owl's hunting behavior. Also different from most any other kind of owl, the bill is placed on the face between the eyes rather than below it, which is said to impart this fish owl with a "remarkably morose and sinister expression". Similar adaptations, such as unwillingness to submerge beyond their legs and lack of sound-muffling feathers are also seen in the African fishing owls, which do not seem to be directly related. Due to their neat replacement of each other in range, at one time the tawny and buffy fish owls were considered the same species but there are a number of physical, anatomical, habitat, and behavioral distinctions between them.
caption: Male buffy fish-owl
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