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Natural History

Blakiston's fish owl

Blakiston's fish owl
Blakiston's fish owl

Blakiston's fish owl (Ketupa blakistoni), the largest living species of owl, is a fish owl, a sub-group of eagle-owls that specialize in hunting in riparian areas. It is native to China, Japan, and the Russian Far East. This species is a part of the family known as typical owls (Strigidae), which contains most species of owl. Blakiston's fish owl and three other piscivorous owls are placed with some eagle-owls in the genus Ketupa. Its habitat is riparian forest with large, old trees for nest sites near lakes, rivers, springs, and shoals that do not freeze in winter. Henry Seebohm named this bird after the English naturalist Thomas Blakiston, who collected the original specimen in Hakodate on Hokkaidō, Japan in 1883.

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Amami-Ōshima Island, Tokunoshima Island, northern part of Okinawa Island, and Iriomote Island.

Convention Relative to the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in their Natural State.

See also

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.

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