Although April has barely arrived, nesting season has begun.\u00a0 Birds of prey take a long time to fledge young so their breeding season starts early.\u00a0 For example, Great Horned Owls incubate their eggs for five weeks and the young do not take their first flight for another seven or eight weeks.\u00a0 Owls are courting now, accomplished mostly by vocalizations.\u00a0 Now is a great time of go owling.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s consider the three most common owls in the state.\u00a0 We\u2019ll cover their distinctive calls as well as their morphology, diet and habitat preferences.<\/p>\n
Barred Owls are common residents of woodlands, particularly around lakeshores and swamps.\u00a0 These birds are gray with distinctive vertical black and white lines on the underside. Barred Owls have large, brown eyes; all the other owls in the state have yellow eyes.<\/p>\n
Barred Owls are active at night and at twilight.\u00a0 They are heard far more often than they are seen.\u00a0 The booming call of the Barred Owl has been described as “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”.\u00a0 Once you have heard the call, it becomes instantly recognizable.<\/p>\n
Barred Owls have a fairly broad diet.\u00a0 Small mammals like mice, voles and squirrels compose much of their diet although birds up to the size of Belted Kingfishers, turtles and even insects may be taken.<\/p>\n
Great Horned Owls are perhaps nearly as common as Barred Owls in Maine.\u00a0 Unlike a Barred Owl, a Great Horned Owl has two tufts of feathers on the top of its head that form the “horns”.\u00a0 With a wingspread up to five feet, these owls are impressive birds.\u00a0 The plumage is generally brown with some white feathers on the throat and cross-barred markings on the breast.<\/p>\n
Capable of flying on silent wings and equipped with massive talons, Great Horned Owls are efficient predators.\u00a0 Like the Barred Owl, Great Horned Owls hunt mainly at night and at dawn and dusk.\u00a0 These birds can kill birds as large as pheasants, Red-tailed Hawks and Barred Owls and mammals as large as mink and domestic cats.<\/p>\n
The call of the Great Horned Owl is a five- or six-note call, consisting of resounding hoots in the following cadence: hoot hoot-hoot hoot hoot.<\/p>\n
The last of our common owls is the small Northern Saw-whet Owl.\u00a0 Only eight inches long, Saw-whet Owls are endearing little predators.\u00a0 They feed primarily on mice as well as young squirrels, chipmunks and small songbirds.<\/p>\n
The common name of this owl presumably comes from one of its calls that can be likened to the sound that is made when a mill saw is sharpened or whetted.\u00a0 The typical call is a series of monotonous whistles that seem to go on forever.<\/p>\n
Saw-whet Owls are birds of dense forests, especially coniferous forests.\u00a0 These owls are strictly nocturnal.<\/p>\n
An owl prowl may well yield all three of these owls by aural identification. All of these owls will respond to imitations of their calls.\u00a0 You might enjoy driving some back roads after dark, stopping periodically to listen for the sounds of owl courtship.<\/p>\n
The Eastern Screech-Owl is a common bird throughout the eastern United States to our south but is quite rare in Maine. The Maine Bird Records Committee currently recognizes only four records for the state, all from the central part of the state.<\/p>\n
Eastern Screech-Owls give two distinctive calls.\u00a0 One is a long, tremulous trill and the second is a whinny, a string of descending notes.\u00a0 Evan Glynn, Josh Fecteau, Andy Aldrich and Kevin Couture heard an Eastern Screech-Owl in York, Maine on March 22. They were able to get a recording to confirm the record. A very nice discovery!<\/p>\n
To prepare yourself in advance of an owl prowl, I recommend visiting the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology\u2019s website, http:\/\/allaboutbirds.org\u00a0 You can search for any species of North American bird.\u00a0 The information will include several sound recordings.<\/p>\n\n
Although April has barely arrived, nesting season has begun.\u00a0 Birds of prey take a long time to fledge young so their breeding season starts early.\u00a0 For example, Great Horned Owls incubate their eggs for five weeks and the young do not take their first flight for another seven or eight weeks.\u00a0 Owls are courting now, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162219,433,420],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}