Owl? In Kilim Geoforest Park, Langkawi. (1 Viewer)

[ut_matt]

On a boat tour of the mangroves in Kilim Geoforest Part, Langkawi, Malaysia, our tour guide showed us these birds.





He was hard to understand, but he seemed to be calling them eagles, or eagle owls, or something. The purple scale-like feathers were bizarre looking.

This was early January 2025, in the afternoon. The birds were quite small - maybe 6 - 8 inches tall. I didn't see them move at all.

Can someone help identify these, please?

 

[ut_matt]

Actually, I wonder if the purple was made more intense by my (smartphone) camera - this photo that my wife took looks less purple.

 

[Muppit17]

View attachment 1628732
Actually, I wonder if the purple was made more intense by my (smartphone) camera - this photo that my wife took looks less purple.

Certainly a Scops Owl and as eBird only has Oriental Scops from that location I guess that it what they were.

As for colour rendition, the combination of intense light and dark shade seems to confuse all digital cameras and phone cameras more than many. Remember all images are manipulated by the software to some extent and with phones they have poor optical systems with great software so almost anything is possible. Even with digital cameras there are some bits of interpretation that are confusing, especially with JPEG (minimised with RAW shooting). I would say the purple is an artefact.

For instance, I attach a couple of JPEGs from recent shoot in Mexico of Red-bordered Pixie (a butterfly). These have had no post production modification (except crop) but note that even here the bright red has been rendered as bright yellow in part - and this is with the normally excellent Sony RX10 MKIV.

 

[ut_matt]

Thanks, Muppit!