Mice succumb to horned owl’s vision, hearing

For the first time, I have picked a raptor for my bird of the month.

One reason I selected the great horned owl is that this particular owl in the accompanying photograph has been hanging around our backyard for most of August and September displaying quite a lot of odd behavior.

It is a juvenile. Even though it is fully feathered and as large as its parents, it is totally dependent on them for all of its food. Young owls have to go through a rather long training period before they can catch their own prey.

I don’t know how the owl became a symbol of wisdom when this particular owl hasn’t even got the word that owls are creatures of the night.

He flies around all day sitting on fence posts and on top of our buildings. We never see its parents because they hunt after dark to catch enough prey to feed this young freeloader.

Great horned owls are found all over North America and are quite beneficial in keeping down rodent populations. In this part of Oregon, they complement the redtail hawks that work the day shift by keeping the nocturnal rodent population in check.

Even though mice make up the better part of their diet, great horned owls are large enough to catch rabbits, muskrats, skunks, and yes, even an occasional housecat. When a mother skunk takes her babies out at night to forage for food, they become easy pickings for great horned owls to feed their nestlings. Apparently, owls don’t have olfactory glands.

However, there are two other vital senses that owls have that are better than most any other bird of prey — an extremely keen sense of hearing and acute night vision. It has been proven that great horned owls can catch mice by sound only in total darkness.

Great horned owls are the earliest nesters of all the raptors I know of. They start laying eggs in February usually by taking over a redtail hawk’s nest. They have their owlets hatch at the same time the wild rabbits are born. One other peculiarity of owls is that they swallow their mice whole and regurgitate the indigestible bones and fur in the form of pellets. These owl pellets give biologists a way to determine their diet.

For those who live near forest habitats and want to hear the loud hooting of the great horned owl, try listening just before dawn next January when their mating season begins.