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Barn Owl

The barn owl is a long-legged, light-colored bird with a white, heart-shaped face. It is sometimes called the monkey-faced owl. A barn owl is 15-20 inches in length with a 44-inch wingspan; females weigh about 24 ounces, males up to 20 ounces. Both sexes have whitish or pale cinnamon underparts and buffy or rusty upper plumage.

A barn owl has neither of two characteristics often associated with owls: "horns" or hooting-type calls. Its calls include a long, drawn-out whistle, loud hisses and snores.

Barn owls nest in barns, church towers, hollow trees, old buildings, silos and ventilating shafts. They do not build nests, although castings may form a base for the eggs. They usually nest in March, April or May and lay from 3-11 eggs (generally 5-7) at two- to three-day intervals. Incubation takes about 33 days.

After the eggs hatch, both parents feed the young. Nestling barn owls can eat their weight in food every night. Young leave the nest at 9-12 weeks, after flight feathers develop.

Barn owls hunt open fields, flying low over the ground in search of prey. Ornithologists studied 200 disgorged pellets from a pair of barn owls that nested in a tower of the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, D.C. The pellets contained 444 skulls, including those of 225 meadow mice, 179 house mice, 20 rats and 20 shrews--all caught in the city. Other studies have confimmed mice and shrews as this owl's main prey items. Small birds, insects, flying squirrels and rabbits occasionally are taken.

Great Horned Owl

This large owl is sometimes called the tiger of the air; it is our fiercest, most powerful and aggressive owl. It weighs up to 3 1/2 pounds, is 20-23 inches in length and has a wingspan of nearly five feet. Females are slightly larger than males. A great horned owl has soft brown plumage above, mottled with grayish-white; undersides of light gray barred with dark; a "collar" of white feathers on the upper breast; a rust-colored face; and prominent ear tufts, the so-called horns, up to two inches long.

The great horned is known as the hoot owl for its call, 3-8 (usually 5) deep, booming, uninflected hoots: hoo-hoohoo hoo. These owls hoot to stake out territory and as part of the species' mating activity, which in Pennsylvania takes place in December or early January.

Great horned owls are believed to mate for life. They nest in crow, heron or hawk nests, tree cavities or hollow stumps and are the earliest nesters of all owls. A mated pair cleans debris from an appropriated nest, and the female then partly lines a central hollow with feathers. She lays two or three eggs at several-day intervals, usually in February, and may temporarily get covered with snow while incubating.

Horned owls, especially incubating or brooding pairs, defend nests and young viciously and have even attacked humans who got too close. Eggs hatch in about a month; nestlings are downy-white, weak and blind. The young cannot fly until they're almost three months old and contour feathers have grown.

Great horned owls prey on rabbits, wood rats, mice, birds, hares, domestic poultry, grouse, squirrels, smaller owls, foxes, skunks (this species' defensive spray apparently does not deter the great horned owl), domestic cats, weasels, muskrats in short, most animals other than the large mammals.

Favored habitats are heavily forested land, large woodlots and remote wilderness areas; the species ranges over much of North America. Horned owls aren't often found in populated areas, apparently needing solitude for nesting. In Pennsylvania, the great homed owl is an uncommon resident in all seasons.

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