Brown Fish-Owl

The brown fish-owl is native from Turkey to South and Southeast Asia and inhabits forests and wooded wetlands. Of the four living fish owls it is the most widely distributed, most common and best studied. It was described in 1788 from a picture of an owl drawn by a Ceylonese artist, and the nominate subspecies zeylonensis is the Sri Lankan one; four subspecies are recognised (Wikipedia, general species account).

Nationally Least Concern (Sri Lanka National Red List 2012).