Richard Klim
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Allen & Collar 2013. Giant Scops Owl Otus [Mimizuku] gurneyi restored to the Samar avifauna. BirdingASIA 19: 59–60.
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Plate 1. Giant Scops Owl Otus gurneyi tied on hunter's pole, Barangay Surok, Borongan, eastern Samar, Philippines, 5 August 2010. Bruce Young.
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Distressing as it is to witness animals in such circumstances, the record at least offers the encouragement that the Giant Scops Owl has a wider range than was recently believed. Indeed, if the species is present on Samar it is also likely to occure on Leyte, since the avifaunas of the two islands are, or at least were, virtually identical ...
A number of species share a range on the three large islands of Mindanao, Samar and Leyte, ... e.g. ...; so the record of Giant Scops Owl from Samar fits an established pattern.
However, several of the species listed above are differentiated at the subspecies level between Mindanao on the one side and Samar and Leyte on the other, and in some cases the levels of morphological differentiation have been sufficient to redefine species limits in taxa across these islands: ...
Future searchers for the Giant Scops Owl (and other species) in Samar and Leyte might therefore bear in mind the possibility that the birds on these islands may prove to be taxonomically distinct from those of Mindanao.