Indian eagle-owl
species of bird

The Indian eagle-owl (Bubo bengalensis), or the Bengal eagle-owl or rock eagle-owl, is a large horned owl species native to hilly and rocky scrub forests in the Indian subcontinent. It is splashed with brown and grey, and has a white throat patch with black small stripes. It was earlier treated as a subspecies of the Eurasian eagle-owl. It is usually seen in pairs. It has a deep resonant booming call that may be heard at dawn and dusk.
Taxonomy
Bubo bengalensis was the scientific name used by James Franklin in 1831 for an eagle-owl, that was collected in northern India.
Description
This species is often considered a subspecies of the Eurasian eagle-owl Bubo bubo and is very similar in appearance. The facial disk is unmarked and has a black border, a feature that is much weaker in the Eurasian form. The base of the primaries is unbanded and rufous. The tail bands have the tawny bands wider than the black ones.
“Indian eagle-owl” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Indian, eagle-owl and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Indian eagle-owl” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Indian, eagle-owl and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q817172. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1831.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian eagle-owl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.