Owls (Wild Only)
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Beautiful creatures and full of character . This one and it's mate were busy all afternoon providing for their chicks.
This is the same Snowy Owl I posted on February 26. In this view, we can see a few brown freckles and lines.
The light was very harsh, and almost directly on him, hence the squint.
Strathcona County, Alberta.
This was at Hayes Nature Preserve. The pair have been nesting there for the last few years. I hope to get a few more of them before the young fledge this year. This was from my first encounter with them in 2015.
Tawny Owl - Strix Aluco
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Tawny Owl - Strix Aluco
The tawny owl or brown owl (Strix aluco) is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of Eurasia. Its underparts are pale with dark streaks, and the upperparts are either brown or grey. Several of the eleven recognised subspecies have both variants. The nest is typically in a tree hole where it can protect its eggs and young against potential predators. This owl is non-migratory and highly territorial. Many young birds starve if they cannot find a vacant territory once parental care ceases.
This nocturnal bird of prey hunts mainly rodents, usually by dropping from a perch to seize its prey, which it swallows whole; in more urban areas its diet includes a higher proportion of birds. Vision and hearing adaptations and silent flight aid its night hunting. The tawny owl is capable of catching smaller owls, but is itself vulnerable to the eagle owl or northern goshawk.
Although many people believe this owl has exceptional night vision, its retina is no more sensitive than a human's and its asymmetrically placed ears are key to its hunting by giving it excellent directional hearing. Its nocturnal habits and eerie, easily imitated call, have led to a mythical association of the tawny owl with bad luck and death.
Population:
UK breeding:
50,000 pairs
This Barred Owl gave us a delightful experience during a visit to Brazos Bend State Park. We inadvertently flushed it from next to the water up into a low tree where he sat for quite some time while we took way too many photos.
Strix varia
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I heard some cool vocalizations going on in my backyard last night! It was two barred owls singing duets to each other. I guess love is in the air. This photo of a barred owl was taken in my backyard. Maybe one of the owls I heard last night :-)!
Barn Owl - Tyto Alba
Like most owls, the barn owl is nocturnal, relying on its acute sense of hearing when hunting in complete darkness. It often becomes active shortly before dusk and can sometimes be seen during the day when relocating from one roosting site to another. In Britain, on various Pacific Islands and perhaps elsewhere, it sometimes hunts by day. This practice may depend on whether the owl is mobbed by other birds if it emerges in daylight. However, in Britain, some birds continue to hunt by day even when mobbed by such birds as magpies, rooks and black-headed gulls, such diurnal activity possibly occurring when the previous night has been wet making hunting difficult. By contrast, in southern Europe and the tropics, the birds seem to be almost exclusively nocturnal, with the few birds that hunt by day being severely mobbed.
Barn owls are not particularly territorial but have a home range inside which they forage. For males in Scotland this has a radius of about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the nest site and an average size of about 300 hectares. Female home ranges largely coincide with that of their mates. Outside the breeding season, males and females usually roost separately, each one having about three favoured sites in which to conceal themselves by day, and which are also visited for short periods during the night. Roosting sites include holes in trees, fissures in cliffs, disused buildings, chimneys and haysheds and are often small in comparison to nesting sites. As the breeding season approaches, the birds move back to the vicinity of the chosen nest to roost.
Once a pair-bond has been formed, the male will make short flights at dusk around the nesting and roosting sites and then longer circuits to establish a home range. When he is later joined by the female, there is much chasing, turning and twisting in flight, and frequent screeches, the male's being high-pitched and tremulous and the female's lower and harsher. At later stages of courtship, the male emerges at dusk, climbs high into the sky and then swoops back to the vicinity of the female at speed. He then sets off to forage. The female meanwhile sits in an eminent position and preens, returning to the nest a minute or two before the male arrives with food for her. Such feeding behaviour of the female by the male is common, helps build the pair-bond and increases the female's fitness before egg-laying commences.
Barn owls are cavity nesters. They choose holes in trees, fissures in cliff faces, the large nests of other birds such as the hamerkop (Scopus umbretta) and, particularly in Europe and North America, old buildings such as farm sheds and church towers. Buildings are preferred to trees in wetter climates in the British Isles and provide better protection for fledglings from inclement weather. Trees tend to be in open habitats rather than in the middle of woodland and nest holes tend to be higher in North America than in Europe because of possible predation.
This bird has suffered declines through the 20th century and is thought to have been adversely affected by organochlorine pesticides such as DDT in the 1950s and '60s.
Nocturnal birds like the barn owl are poorly monitored by the Breeding Bird Survey and, subject to this caveat, numbers may have increased between 1995-2008.
Barn owls are a Schedule 1 and 9 species.
Population:
UK breeding:
4,000 pairs
Europe:
110-220,000 pairs
This guy shows up regularly in my backyard. My defense crows will harass him as soon as he shows up.
These owls roost in the day, usually in pairs. When disturbed they may fly in bright sunshine although they choose to shelter within a dense grove of trees. They produce an eerie chuhua-aa call with a quaver in the second note. This call is an antiphonal duet of the male and female. The male calls one or two times followed by the female's shorter and less tremulous version. The calling is more frequent in November when the begin to breed. Most Nests are found from February to April. They also produce a single note hoot and a screech not unlike that of the barn owl. The nest is a tree hollow in which two to three white eggs are laid. They feed on palm squirrels, mice
A Northern Pygmy-Owl in Ketchum Idaho. The owl was looking at some Black-billed Magpies that were pestering and pecking him. He finally flew away. I hope it got some peace from the annoying Magpies.
Great grey owl, Strix nebulosa, lapinpöllö, Finland.
A great grey owl searching for food in a cloudy spring evening. They have had hard times lately with lots of snow but not so many voles to eat. Thus a number of owls have been seen near residential areas.
I took this early in 2019 in the area of a nest in Pinellas County, Florida. I am hoping that the owls return to the nest this year and raise their young.
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