Owls montage # 1 (Patreon)

Owls! I've drawn more owls than this (several others have been shared here already), but here are those I've tidied and composited so far. All of these are extinct. Lots of interesting stuff to say about how they were reconstructed...

At far left is the giant Plio-Pleistocene hawk owl Surnia robusta, which is only known from fragments. My thinking is that it would be (1) c 30% bigger than extant hawk owls, and (2) with something different plumage-wise. I experimented with various facial stripes, but ended up with the dark mask since that looks badass and immediately distinct from S. ulula (the living species). Oh, I also deliberately made the eyes a bit smaller (proportionally) than they are in S. ulula, in keeping with overall larger size. But it's a wholly speculative reconstruction - of a species that hasn't been reconstructed before.

In the middle we have the gigantic Cuban Pleistocene owl Ornimegalonyx.  Ornimegalonyx is an enigma: it's only known from bits and pieces and we don't know what sort of owl but it. BUT the shape of its skull inferred from fragments (figured by Arrendondo in 1976) makes it look superficially like an Athene or Glaucidium owl, and it's on this basis that I opted to give it the same sort of shape as those owls. We have direct measurement data on its skull width, sternum size, tarsometatarsus length and claw size, and all of these details are incorporated into the reconstruction, so the scaling is about correct - this owl would have been 1.1 m tall. It is inferred that its wings were small and that it was flightless, and this explains why I gave it small wings with a fairly untidy plumage. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Standing to the right of Ornimegalonyx is the extinct Mascarene owl Mascarenotus, variously compared over the years with scops owls and eagle owls, and known to have persisted into the 1700s (one of the 3 species was illustrated from life, and there are descriptions of these birds in life too). Julian Hume has illustrated Mascarenotus a few times, and I used his art (and the 1700s drawing by Jossigny) in producing this reconstruction: there are bones of these owls and I used the measurement data published by Mourer-Chauvire et al. in 1996 in producing the reconstruction too, but they don't really provide any useful info on life appearance.

Finally, the extinct Hawaiian stilt-legged owl Grallistrix is shown at far right. I did two things in producing this reconstruction. Firstly, I used the tons of measurement data published by Olson & James to get the proportions right (though I had to cheat and use data from several individuals, all belonging to G. geleche, the Molokai species). The resulting reconstruction looked ridiculous, and I had to keep re-posturing the legs to make the animal work. I think you can see why 'stilt-legged owl' is an appropriate moniker. Secondly, I followed Olson & James's thinking on the affinities of this owl in deciding on pattern and pigment: they reckon that it descends from Strix, so I used wood owls, tawny owls and so on in formulating what you see here. Again, I think it works.

And I've done more owls too. The book will feature a whole-page montage of the things -- or that's the plan, anyway.