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Eight Hunts Documented Brown Fish-Owls Taking Amphibians, Reptiles and Mammals in Satchari

Wild Brown Fish-Owl perched in forest at Biligiriranga Hills Tiger Reserve, India
Research · Ecology

Eight directly observed predation events at Satchari National Park in northeastern Bangladesh documented brown fish-owls (Ketupa zeylonensis) taking amphibians, reptiles and mammals in a forest where permanent water bodies are largely absent. The observations were made during nocturnal mammal surveys between 2020 and 2023 and were published as a scientific note in 2026.

The researchers recorded the hunts between 20:00 and 23:59 and identified prey from direct observations and photographs. Four of the eight prey records were amphibians, two were reptiles and two were mammals. Recorded prey included tree frogs of the genus Polypedates, a frog in the genus Microhyla, a frog in the genus Hoplobatrachus, tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), an agamid lizard (Calotes sp.) and Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus).

Most amphibian and reptile prey were taken during the monsoon

Five of the six amphibian and reptile records were made during the monsoon season, from June to September, near streams or small artificial ponds. The remaining record was a tokay gecko taken on 10 April 2021. The mammalian prey was taken around human settlements within the national park. The owls captured prey with their feet and talons, then tore it into smaller pieces with the talons and bill before eating it.

The authors stress that eight opportunistic observations are too few to describe the species’ complete diet at Satchari. They present the records instead as evidence of vertebrate prey other than fish in a mixed-evergreen forest where permanent water bodies are largely absent, and call for longer-term dietary work in comparable habitats.

Sources and image credit

  1. Akhter, T., Mithu, A. I., & Naher, H. (2026). Hunter in the shadows: Vertebrate diet of Brown fish owl (Ketupa zeylonensis) at Satchari national park, Bangladesh. Bangladesh Journal of Zoology, 53(3), 411–414. https://doi.org/10.3329/bjz.v53i3.88376Primary scientific note in Bangladesh Journal of Zoology volume 53(3), whose BanglaJOL issue page records publication on 12 March 2026. Eight directly observed predation events at Satchari National Park included four amphibian, two reptile and two mammal prey records. The authors explicitly describe the observations as opportunistic and the sample as small.

Image: Aparajita Datta — wild Brown Fish-Owl (Ketupa zeylonensis) at Biligiriranga Hills Tiger Reserve near K Gudi, Karnataka, India, photographed 8 July 2017; Wikimedia Commons; representative species image, not one of the Satchari study observations · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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