Great Gray Owls are powerful birds. Despite weighing only 2.5 pounds, they can break through hard packed snow to grab a small mammal. One bird reportedly broke through snow that was hard enough to support a 176-pound human.
Great Gray Owls are big owls, which means that they need to eat regularly. In the winter, they eat up to 7 vole-sized small mammals every day.
Like the Barn Owl and Long-eared Owl they have asymmetrical ear openings that help them find prey by sound alone. The left ear opening is higher on the head than the right ear opening which enables precise directional hearing and lets them nab invisible prey.
The oldest recorded Great Gray Owl was at least 18 years, 9 months old and lived in Alberta, where it was banded in 1996 and found in 2013, after being hit by a car. All research at Cornell All About Birds
Great Gray Owls aren’t just North American owls. They also live in Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia.
This Great Gray Owl left it's perch, flew directly over our head and landed on a piece of angle iron roadside.
Within seconds it pounced down, grabbed it's prey, returned to the perch, and in one quick gulp swallowed it's catch whole. Extremely cool to witness.
The Great Gray Owl are mostly owls of the boreal forest with small populations in western mountains, but in some years, they move farther south in search of food, giving some a unique opportunity to see this majestic owl.
Although the Great Gray Owl is one of the tallest owls in the U.S., it’s just a ball of feathers. Both the Great Horned Owl and Snowy Owl weigh more than a Great Gray Owl and they have larger feet and talons.
It was ultra cool to observe this Great Gray Owl grooming.
Great Gray Owls are majestic to observe to say the least.
I was lucky obtain this image of this owl but also planning and patience paid an important role. I noticed that the owl kept looking done the road along the ditch side toward this stump so I decided to set up on the opposite side of the road across from this stump and sure enough with a little patience I was rewarded.
A late evening glow helped put the owl in terrific lighting.
I refer to this shot as " The Hoodie". If you look close you can see the owl's eye concentrating on the underbrush below.
Barred Owls don’t migrate, and they don’t even move around very much. Of 158 birds that were banded and then found later, none had moved farther than 6 miles away.
Despite their generally sedentary nature, Barred Owls have recently expanded their range into the Pacific Northwest. There, they are displacing and hybridizing with Spotted Owls—their slightly smaller, less aggressive cousins—which are already threatened from habitat loss.
Young Barred Owls can climb trees by grasping the bark with their bill and talons, flapping their wings, and walking their way up the trunk.
The oldest recorded Barred Owl was at least 26 years, 7 months old. It was banded in North Carolina in 1993, and caught due to injury in 2019. Cornell All About Birds
Originally a bird of the east, during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward into California.
Like all owls the Barred Owl can pass completely unnoticed as it flies noiselessly through the dense canopy or snoozes on a tree limb.
The Great Horned Owl is the most serious predatory threat to the Barred Owl. Although the two species often live in the same areas, a Barred Owl will move to another part of its territory when a Great Horned Owl is nearby.
I observed this Barred Owl actively hunting chipmunks in the snow.
Although not common here in Lambton County I’ve probable seen more Barred Owls then any other species of owls. On one owl prowl with the grandkids up on Georgian Bay we could visually see seven Barred Owls at the same time plus hear others calling in the distance. We’ve had them in our campsites on many occasions calling back and forth.
We have also encountered Barred Owls in our travels all over the United States, especially Florida, Michigan and the Midwest.
The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you?” is a classic sound of old forests and treed swamps.
I find the Barred Owl to be a very attractive owl, with soulful deep blue eyes and brown-and-white-striped plumage.
While on an owl prowl in Utah and Arizona we were able to hear quite a few Spotted Owls hooting in the canyons of the Huachuca Mountains in southern Arizona however we were only able to locate this one owl while hiking up Miller Canyon.
Spotted Owls are large owls with rounded heads that lack ear tufts. The wings are broad and rounded; the tail is short.
Spotted Owls are dark-brown overall dappled with white. The chest and belly are marked with large, oval white spots. The facial disks are dark brown with pale marks forming an X between the eyes. The Mexican subspecies has a paler facial disk. The eyes are brown.
Spotted Owls are nocturnal. They hunt small mammals, especially flying squirrels and woodrats, by listening quietly from a perch and then swooping silently down on their prey.
A short series of high toots accelerating through the night announces the presence of a Western Screech-Owl. These compact owls—not much taller than a standard pair of binoculars—hunt in woods and deserts of western North America, where their wide-ranging diet includes everything from worms and crayfish to rats and bats. Found in urban parks and residential areas as well as wilder places, Western Screech-Owls nest in tree cavities, and will readily take to backyard nest boxes. Cornell All About Birds
This Western Screech Owl image was taken near Portal Arizona in the Huachuca Mountains.
The diminutive Western Screech-Owl is a predator to be reckoned with: it occasionally takes prey bigger than its own body, including cottontail rabbits. At other times they’ve been seen eating bats, insects and earthworms, which they collect from rainy roads and even compost piles.
The Whiskered Screech Owl is a small owl restricted to oak woodlands in canyons and foothills in Mexico, barely reaching into southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
It is finely patterned in gray, black, and white. Very similar to Western Screech-Owl; best distinguished by voice. Two song types: one a relatively even series of five to eight "toot" notes; the other sounds like morse code: "toot-toot, toot, toot, toot-toot, toot." Also note paler bill than Western Screech-Owl. Cornell All About Birds
We observed Whiskered Screech Owls in Cave Creek Arizona near the Mexican border and heard their morse code call many times during the nights. Very cool indeed.
While hiking the trails and canyons in the Huachuca Mountains quite often we encountered U.S. Border Patrols. Weird to be hiking along in the wilderness and all of a sudden there are fully armed personnel on the trail. I should mention that periodically large groups of males, mostly teenagers would cross the paths ahead of us and disappear into the wilderness. They told us to be careful hiking the trails because you are so very close to the Mexican border but say you are mostly safe with the human smugglers. It’s the drug smugglers that you don’t want to cross paths with.
The world’s smallest raptor, the diminutive Elf Owl, is not much bigger than a juice box. They live in dry thorn forests, deserts, pine-oak forests, and riparian woodlands of the southern border of the United States and Mexico.
Like many of the songbirds in these habitats, Elf Owls nest in old woodpecker holes and similar cavities, which provide relief from heat, shelter from rain, and protection from predators.
Lots of raptors catch snakes for food—but Elf Owls do something stranger. They catch thread snakes (also known as blind snakes) and bring them back to the nest, alive, where the snakes eat parasites that might otherwise harm the owl's nestlings. Cornell All About Birds
Northern Saw-whet Owls are mottled brown birds with a whitish facial disk and white-spotted head. Their eyes are yellow. Juveniles are dark brown with creamy yellow breast and belly.
During daylight they roost in dense vegetation, typically just above eye level and near the trunk in evergreen trees. They breed in extensive forests across northern North America. They winter in dense forests across the central and southern U.S.
The Northern Saw-whet Owl may have been named for giving a call that sounds like a saw being sharpened on a whetting stone, but there is no consensus as to which of its several calls gave rise to the name.
The main prey items of the Northern Saw-whet Owl are mice, and especially deer mice. Saw-whets usually eat adult mice in pieces, however I have observed a Saw-whet swallow a mouse whole. If you look closely in forest where Northern Saw-whets are wintering you will find stashed meals.
The female Northern Saw-whet Owl does all of the incubation and brooding, while the male does the hunting. When the youngest nestling is about 18 days old, the female leaves the nest to roost elsewhere. The male continues bringing food, which the older nestlings may help feed to their younger siblings.
The female saw-whet keeps the nest very clean, but a mess starts to accumulate when she leaves. By the time the young owls leave the nest, 10 days to 2 weeks later, the nest cavity has a thick layer of feces, pellets, and rotting prey parts.
Migration in saw-whets has historically been poorly understood, because of their nocturnal, reclusive behavior.
In the 1990s researchers began Project Owlnet, a collaboration that now consists of more than 100 owl migration banding sites. Researchers use the too-too-too call to lure owls in to mist nets, and band thousands of saw-whets every fall.
Migrating Northern Saw-whet Owls can cross the Great Lakes or other large bodies of water. In October of 1999, one landed on a fishing vessel 70 miles from shore in the Atlantic Ocean near Montauk, New York.
The oldest Northern Saw-whet Owl on record was at least 9 years, 5 months old when it was captured and released by a Minnesota bird bander in 2007. It was originally banded in Ontario in 1999. Research from Cornell All About Birds
A bird of boreal forests, the Northern Hawk Owl behaves like a hawk but looks like an owl.
Its oval body, yellow eyes, and round face enclosed by dark parentheses are distinctly owl.
Its long tail and habit of perching atop solitary trees and hunting by daylight, though, are reminiscent of a hawk.
It is a solitary bird that tends to stick to the boreal forest, but some winters it moves south into the northern United States.
Northern Hawk Owls are thought to detect prey primarily by sight. Along with their tendency to hunt in the daytime, their symmetrical ear openings are cited as evidence for daytime hunting—their ears presumably have less acute hearing than the asymmetrical ear openings of species such as Boreal and Great Gray Owls. Cornell All About Birds
My first Northern Hawk Owl observation was on a trip to Ottawa for an owl prowl. As I approached the open quarry where the owl had been seen the owl flew out of the tree cover and landed directly over me. I later learned that photo tour groups had been baiting the owl with mice and for sure, sadly, I had the uneasy feeling that the owl had approached me looking for a handout.
I’ve observed two Boreal Owls in my lifetime. Years ago, I travelled to Ottawa to photograph my first Boreal and just this last winter I took my grandson to the Niagara region to observe my second. It was truly a very cool experience for both of us.
The Boreal Owl is a bright-eyed, square faced owl. It will sit and wait on a perch for small mammals and birds before gliding down talons first to grab it.
From late winter through spring, its quick, hollow hooting sounds across the dark forest as the male calls for a mate. They spend the year in boreal forests, occasionally making their way farther south in years of prey scarcity.
As with most other raptors, the female Boreal Owl is much larger than the male. In fact, they show the most extreme sexual dimorphism of any American owl, with the female sometimes 2 times heavier than the male.
The ear openings on a Boreal Owl's skull are asymmetrical, with one opening high up on the skull and the other much lower. The different positions of the ear openings help the owl find exactly where a sound comes from, helping gauge height as well as distance. Cornell All About Birds
