The Brown Fish Owl is a large owl whose range extends from Turkey and the Middle East through India and parts of Southeast Asia to southeastern China.
It has reddish-brown plumage with dark streaks and buff to whitish underparts marked with darker streaks. Long, pointed ear tufts are prominent.
In Goa, India, researchers examined 104 regurgitated pellets from two Brown Fish Owl sites along forest streams and roosts. The pellets contained 212 prey individuals; crabs made up 75.47%, followed by frogs at 8.02% and fish at 7.08%.
Snakes, birds, scorpions, insects and unidentified remains formed the smaller categories. The food-niche breadth value was 0.1, and the authors described the owl’s diet in these localities as specialized around crabs.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Crabs were the predominant prey group in the material analysed at the two study localities, alongside other invertebrates and vertebrates.