Mopoke

Nor, I think is it anything to do with the boobook, as the subtle brown owl we called the mopoke is more properly known. ❋ Unknown (2009)

The budgerigars were all asleep in the big red gum up above, and somewhere along the river bed, the mopoke was calling again. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

It was the boobook owl, mopoke, a totem being to the Arrernte Aborigines of these arid lands along the Macdonnell Ranges to the west of Alice Springs. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

Then, just as I thought daybreak was near, a great mopoke flits close over our heads without any rustling or noise, like the ghost of a bird, and begins to hoot in a big, bare, hollow tree just ahead of us. ❋ Unknown (2004)

After a few seconds we heard the cry of the mopoke. ❋ Unknown (2004)

But the beetles, realizing in a dim, earth-encumbered, lumbering style that it is fatal to emerge either in broad daylight, when many enemies are about, or when night has fallen and the wailing stone curlew and the sedate mopoke and the noisy “chop chop” (nightjar) are prowling, choose the few minutes of dusk for their exit from the moist soil. ❋ Unknown (2003)

The gorgeous, garish splendour of sunset pageantry flames out; the long shadows eagerly cover all; the kookaburras laugh their merry mocking good-night; the clouds fade to turquoise, green, and grey; the stars peep shyly out; the soft call of the mopoke arises in the gullies! ❋ Miles Franklin (1916)

It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than hers -- that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke -- the sardonic bird of the South. ❋ Gilbert Parker (1897)

I believe he's the devil in the shape of a mopoke! ❋ Rolf Boldrewood (1870)

Nosepeg’s dreaming was the mopoke, the boobook owl I had heard in the night. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)

The painting, on a base of red ochre on an offcut of cardboard two feet by two and a half feet, depicted Nosepeg’s dreaming, his mopoke country, in a dreamer’s aerial vision of a hill with a waterhole at its peak and ten clefts or valleys running down from the summit like petals. ❋ Roger Deakin (2009)