5 Fascinating Owls of North America

It's always a treat when we get to see an owl. They are active when it’s dark, have unique feathers that allow them to fly almost completely silent, and are pretty much solitary. Some species stand out though or do things differently.

00:00 Intro
00:23 Burrowing Owl
01:25 Great Horned Owl
02:24 Great Grey Owl
03:16 Short-eared Owl
04:02 Snowy Owl

Unlike most owls, the Burrowing Owls, live in family groups and nest underground. Their stern serious look and practically turning their head upside down is too comical.

Great Horned Owls are very large and very widespread too, found throughout all of North America and even throughout South America. There isn’t a habitat these large birds can’t make a suitable home it seems. Among owls these guys have the most varied diet too, preying on tiny rodents, scorpions, and bats, to skunks, rabbits, rats, birds and anything in between.

The Great Grey is one of our tallest owl species. One of the most interesting things about this large bird is how they hunt. Their strikingly beautiful face has dish-shaped feathers surrounding it that work to funnel sound to its ears, this combined with their asymmetrical ear openings, left ear opening higher on the head than the right ear opening enables precise directional hearing and lets them grab hidden prey. It is so good that they can hunt just by sound alone.

The Short-eared Owls are very common in the United States. An odd thing about them is that while most owls do not build their own nests, these guys actually do. The female will scrape a bowl-shaped nest into the ground and line it with things such as grass and soft feathers. A fascinating thing is that if a female is forced to leave her nest, by a predator she will defecate on the eggs. The rancid smell is thought to repel predators or mask the scent of the eggs. That is a pretty good defense mechanism.

The Snowy owl. Breath-taking birds to see, their yellow glowing eyes and beautiful snow-white plumage work very well to blend them into their surrounding snowy environment. An interesting thing is that every 4 to 5 years, their favorite prey, voles, and lemmings drop significantly, making it hard for them to live in the arctic, so large numbers of snowies leave Moving southward by the hundreds and sometimes thousands. Making their winter home across Canada and in many states of the Lower 48. What a spectacular treat. Once or twice in a lifetime, a mega-irruption occurs.

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