A relatively small owl with no real ear hair, although some facial expressions give the impression that the owl's ears are slightly hairy. There is no data for gender size or color differences. The slightly heart-shaped and dark face disc has black vertical patches through the large brown-black eyes, and a V-shaped frontal shield leads to the yellow mouth. There are creepy protrusions in the upper part, with spots in black and white, and dark maroon flight feathers and tail feathers with obvious dark stripes and black and yellow spots. The lower part is pale with many black and white spots. Relatively short, brown feathered legs with light gray-brown toes and dirty white to light gray claws. Undescribed juvenile. A prominent ochre wing patch is shown in flight during flight.
Call made a loud but sliding whistle, whining, reminiscent of a man barking his or her dog; the syllables in the middle were much higher than the other two, and the whole phrase was usually repeated three or four times before a long pause. Single notes are two to three times longer than those of the Oriental Bay Owl. Food and hunting are little known. The four particles recently discovered contain only the bones and fur of small rodents. The habitat is dense evergreen mixed forests, mainly distributed on hills up to 2200 meters above sea level.
Two heterogeneous variants of the geographic variant are known: assimilateds from Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Ripley in the Western Ghats of India. Compared to the rippleyi from South India, the edges around the mask of the assimilis subspecies are darker, the color around the eyes is darker, the barrier of the primary part is stronger and wider, and the markings on the back and chest are elongated rather than round. The two also sounded different: Ripley only repeated the whistle twice, with a total duration of C. A long pause of 4 seconds before. Only after DNA studies can it be known whether these xenospecies represent two different kinds of Bay owls, endemic to Sri Lanka and South India.
Status and distribution are found only in Kerala, South Carolina. India, and Sri Lanka. Although little research has been done, especially in India, the species is clearly not as rare as previously thought. However, it may be endangered due to habitat destruction.
Similar species, the xenomorph barn owl is significantly larger. Although similar in size, the Oriental Bay owl is geographically separated, with far fewer spots on its bright reddish-brown back, tail and wings weak dark barrier.