It is another Ninox genus owl, like our beloved Nelly, the Barking Owl.

You may catch a bit of the resemblance if you look closely.

It’s got a lot of names since it’s found from India/Pakistan down through Indonesia, so it’s also the Brown Boobook and I’m sure dozens of other things. Ninox scutulata is the formal name for it.

The following is from Owling.com and gives some more names for it, a slightly different range of habitat, and says that 2 have supposedly been seen in the Aleutians. One never knows where an owl will turn up unexpectedly!

Brown Hawk Owl or Northern Boobook has only one recorded live occurrence in North America. This was on St Paul Island, Alaska on the 27th of August in 2007. Another record of a deceased bird from Kiska Island was found on the 1st of August in 2008. Brown Hawk Owl is typically found in Southern Asia. Northern Boobook is a subspecies of the Brown Hawk Owl. These two owls are so extremely similar that they have never been formally divided into separate species. They are also visually indistinguishable in the field. Because the Northern Boobook is such a long-distance migrant that breeds in Japan, China and SE Russia it is the owl listed by the AOS (American Ornithological Society – formerly AOU) and thought to have been the owl that occurred in North America. We cover this species here because… it’s possible.