The bottom of the body is light with clear longitudinal strokes, the top is darker, with black marks. From gray and long-tailed tawny owls should be distinguished by the presence of concentric circles on the facial disc around the eyes, a black spot under the beak, yellow eyes and sickle-shaped white spots on both sides of the beak, clearly visible even at dusk.
A wingspan of up to 158 sm; the males ' average weight of 880 g, females 1200 g.
There are two subspecies – one in North America, the other – S. n. lapponica – in Eurasia.
The last subspecies inhabits forests from Belarus to the Pacific coast along its entire length, except Kamchatka.
For the first time this species was reliably registered in Bashkortostan in 1990 in the Burayevsky district - hunters picked up a frozen bird and brought it to the zoological museum of the Bashkir State University (Valuev VA, 2008). Then meetings became more frequent.
Bearded Tawny owl is listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Bashkortostan (2014), with assignment of category III rarity (a rare species). The places of meetings or nesting listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus are noted in Abzelilovsky, Belokataysky, Beloretsk, Burayevsky, Burzyansky, Zilairsky, Kaltasinsky, Kugarchinsky and Mechetlinsky districts of the republic.
At the same time, information on the nesting of the species on the Ufa Plateau (including on the Karatau Ridge), the Priai Plain and the Mesyagutov steppe are given in the book by I.V. Karyakina "Synopsis of the birds of the fauna of the Republic of Bashkortostan" (1998), which is consistent with the meetings on the territory of the Salavat district in the Yangan-Tau geopark.
