Many Australians are familiar with the Tawny Frog Mouth, with these nocturnal birds being distributed almost across the entire continent of Australia.
Despite people’s familiarity with the Tawny Frog Mouth, a significant majority of people mistakenly believe these guys to be a species of owl!
There are several key difference with owls and Tawny Frog Mouths that are a result of them being in different families. Firstly, while owls hunt and subdue prey using powerful talons, the tawny Frog Mouth doesn’t use his feet to hunt at all, so they’ve never evolved the powerful feet and sharp claws we see on owls and other raptors, secondly tawny Frog mouths lack the sharp, hooked beams of owls, hawks and falcons and instead have a very wide mouth used for catching flying prey on the wing, lastly tawny Frog mouths don’t lay their eggs and tear their young in follow logs like owls do but farther construct a nest out of sticks and twigs in the fork of a tree
Despite these major differences with tawny Frog mouths and owls, both birds are faced with largely the same threats, a major one being the build of of poison in their bodies when human beings use poisonous baits to control rodents and insects.