Sains Malaysiana 47(7)(2018): 1439–1445

http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2018-4707-11

 

Territorial and Duet Calls of Three Malaysian Owl Species

(Panggilan Kewilayahan dan Berdua-dua Tiga Spesies Burung Hantu Malaysia)

 

SIEW ANN YEE¹, CHONG LEONG PUAN^1,2,3* & PHOOI KUAN CHANG¹

 

¹Faculty of Forestry, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

 

²Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Products (INTROP), Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

 

³Biodiversity Unit, Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

 

Received: 30 November 2017/Accepted: 9 March 2018

 

ABSTRACT

Vocalisations of tropical birds are still largely unexplored particularly the nocturnal species. This study examined and quantitatively described the territorial calls and duets of the Sunda Scops-Owl (Otus lempiji), Brown Boobook (Ninox scutulata) and Spotted Wood-Owl (Strix seloputo) based on 105 territorial call and four duetting recordings collected from one forest reserve and oil palm smallholdings in Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests found significant differences (p<0.05) for almost all vocal parameters measured from the spectrograms derived from the duets with one higher-pitched than the other. Being the first study to describe the vocal structure of the duetting calls of the three Malaysian strigids, this study serves as a baseline for future behavioural study of nocturnal birds particularly pertaining to conspecific interactions in the Sunda region.

 

Keywords: Duet; spectrogram; territorial call; tropical nocturnal bird; vocalisation

 

ABSTRAK

Penyuaraan burung tropika masih belum diterokai terutamanya spesies malam. Kajian ini melihat dan secara kuantitatif menggambarkan panggilan kewilayahan dan berdua-dua Burung Jampuk (Otus lempiji), Burung Betemak (Ninox scutulata) dan Burung Carik-kafan (Strix seloputo) berdasarkan 105 rakaman panggilan kewilayahan dan empat berdua-dua yang dikumpulkan dari satu hutan rizab dan ladang kelapa sawit di Selangor, Semenanjung Malaysia. Ujian pangkat bertanda Wilcoxon mendapati terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan (p<0.05) untuk hampir semua parameter vokal yang diukur daripada spektrogram yang diperoleh daripada berdua-dua dengan satu nada yang lebih tinggi daripada yang lain. Sebagai kajian pertama untuk menggambarkan struktur vokal panggilan merangkumi tiga spesies burung hantu di Malaysia, kajian ini berfungsi sebagai garis dasar untuk kajian tingkah laku masa depan burung malam terutama berkaitan dengan interaksi spesies yang sama di rantau Sunda.

 

Kata kunci: Berdua-dua; burung hantu tropika; panggilan kewilayahan; penyuaraan; spektrogram

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*Corresponding author; email: chongleong@upm.edu.my