Northern Boobook Flies from Japan to Philippines Nonstop: Research

Tokyo, Aug. 25 (Jiji Press)--Tracking with a GPS device has revealed that a northern boobook, an owl species, flew more than 1,800 kilometers nonstop over the sea from Japan to the Philippines, according to a study by a research team including Japan's Tohoku University.

The owl species is about 30 centimeters in body length. In Japan, it lives in a wide range of places, except areas including the Ogasawara Islands, remote Tokyo islands in the Pacific, and breeds in locations such as parks in urban areas in summer.

Although it has been found that the owl species spends winter in Southeast Asia, its migratory routes have not been known in detail.

For the study, the researchers attached small GPS data loggers to four northern boobooks that lived in Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan.

An analysis last summer of data collected from one of the four showed that the male bird traveled south over the Japanese archipelago in late October 2024. It then flew 1,848 kilometers from Cape Sata, Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, to the Philippine island of Luzon nonstop over the sea in a 36-hour trip in early November the same year.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]