Candice Larkin grew up near the beach on the Gold Coast, but these days spends much of her time alone on the less balmy New England Tablelands.

For the best part of every month she coaxes her Navara ute up remote muddy bush tracks, doing her best not to get bogged, so she can survey for threatened owls and other birdlife in the area.

She gets up at 4:00am — at sometimes minus 5 degrees Celsius – and is on the go for 12 to 14 hours. Not only is her workday long, it's very solitary.

"I don't really interact with anyone outside of a petrol station," says Ms Larkin, who is doing a PhD at the University of New England.

As part of her work, she has microphones hidden in trees to pick up the sound of owls, which are usually hard to detect because they are only active at night.

She's on the hunt for the lesser-known Australian owls like the elusive and under-studied barking owl whose calls are often confused with the woofs of a dog — and even the screams of a human.

Ms Larkin is also collecting data on the country's smallest and most widespread owl, the boobook or "mopoke", and the barn owl – which in Australia lives in hollow trees and caves rather than barns.

Little is known about the barking owl.(Supplied: Candice Larkin)

She hopes to get a handle on how many owls like these are out there, so we can better protect them.

You can help scientists like Ms Larkin search for owls by identifying their hoots in the ABC's interactive Hoot Detective.

Candice placing one of her recorders in a tree.(Supplied: Candice Larkin)

While all owls are hard to find, barking owls are particularly tricky because in states like NSW, they're thin on the ground, Ms Larkin says.

They don't like coastal or urban areas like the larger and better-known powerful owls. Instead their preferred habitat is remote dry open eucalypt forest and woodland, which can also be home to koalas and quolls.

The problem is so much of this habitat has been cleared for agriculture or burnt by bushfires, and concern is mounting for species like the barking owl.

"We don't know how many are left," Ms Larkin says.

And, unfortunately, to protect a species from going extinct, you have to have firm numbers showing it is actually in serious decline.

"We can't protect it better if we don't know what we have."

Why is it called the barking owl?

Not surprisingly, the barking owl got its name from the short, sharp, double hoot it makes, usually predawn or just after dusk, which can sound like a "woof woof".

"It really does sound like a dog," Ms Larkin says.

And both male and female barking owl hoots can set dogs off barking, says Steven Debus, Ms Larkin's co-supervisor at the University of New England.

Youtube Listen to the sound that gave the barking owl its name.

But the barking owl also, although only rarely, screams — and this has also been known to confuse people.

Sometimes it's a wailing sound, but reports have also referred to a "blood-curdling shriek" that people have mistaken for a human and ended up calling the police.

"There is a bit of a history or folklore about such things going well back to early last century," Dr Debus says.

"It's been called the 'screaming woman owl', which is a bit sexist, I suppose."

He says he is yet to come across a recorded example that is as human-sounding as he has heard.

Listen to the sound of a barking owl scream(Supplied: Fred van Gessel) To listen please use source link below

"[The recordings are] not the shrill scream … which I've heard right overhead at 4:00am while camping in a tent in some remote bushland," says Dr Debus, who has written a number of books on birds of prey.

"I knew what it was, but my companions didn't."

The barking owl's hoots declare their territory, Ms Larkin says, but hooting also plays a courtship role.

Male and female owls have different pitched hoots and can sometimes be heard performing an increasingly frantic duet.

"You can actually audibly hear the birds get excited when their partner gets close," she says.

Youtube A barking owl duet in action.

Looking in remnant bushland

Ms Larkin is strategically surveying potential barking owl habitat that remains in strips of government-owned land called travelling stock reserves.

These green corridors that criss-cross otherwise cleared farming land were once used by drovers on horseback, who herded sheep and cattle from one stock watering place to the next.

Today in NSW, travelling stock reserves form around 2 million hectares worth of remnant bush habitat.

"They're like little Noah's arks floating around," Ms Larkin says.

"We're finding a lot of really threatened species using them to move through the landscape."

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