I've had occasion to work with and photograph many species of owls. They've always fascinated me. With the exception of the Great Horned Owl, they don't compete with us to a great extent for the critters we raise (chickens in our yards) or the critters we hunt and trap. The Great Horned Owl, however, is certainly known to kill chickens, house cats, mink, marten, muskrats, pheasants, squirrels, quail, and a whole host of other critters.

Boreal owl. Vole eater.



Great gray owl. Despite its large size, pretty much lives on voles.



Great horned owl. The "ultimate predator?" If there's a critter out there under 2 pounds, great horned owls probably kill and eat them.



Northern hawk-owl. Mice and voles.



Snowy owl. Lemmings and voles.


Looking forward to Sharon's contribution. Bedazzle us Sharon!

Jack

Nice pics Gulo!

We have three or four on the farm (Great horned) that like to sing to us. Lately they start in on their hooting around 4-4:30 in the afternoon. My farm partner and I always joke that when the owls start hooting it's time to quit for the day.

Wonderful shots, Jack, as always. My favourite owls are the Great Grey and the Pygmy, opposite ends of the size range !

I wish I had more work of them, but so far, this is the one Trapper's Post had me do a while back.

I've heard those Great Horned will even go after skunks ! In studying up on them before I did this image, I learned the colour patterns, especially in the face, vary from east to western parts of the range they occupy. Some are more gray, and others bright beautiful chestnut browns.

Fantastic pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Mac

One of the banders that got me into the game had a pet horned owl and would always have a live trap out for any other owl coming into it's territory. One of the owls he banded was euthanized because they found it had a broken bad leg----then they found the band on it. They were quite upset they had not checked before the gas was adminstered. At the time the bird was 32 years old and was only 5 blocks from where it was initially banded.
Stewart Houston out of Saskatoon Sask use to mail out a bird book to any country farm child that would tell him where a Great Horned owl nest was. Back in the day he traveled many miles banding GHO fledglings. Much was learned of their dispersal with those band returns. Many articles were in the Blue Jay publication

Yes the smell of skunk is always present as some have a great appeal to dine on them.

GHO nest near a marsh with lots of muskrats have many young kits falling out of the nest as the young grow up- as their 2/3 size is when the first kits start to swim.

That snowy owl is beautiful ! I had one hit me from behind while I was walking. It removed my hat and sat on a limb with it for a minute or so before dropping it.

Sharon. your art reminds me of several marten I have skinned that had obvious puncture marks from being grabbed by a bird of some sort. I always wondered why the bird let go. Then I would wonder if the bird grabbed the marten while he was in the trap. No answer of course. Maybe Gulo has some ideas about that

About 20 years ago I went on a fishing/camping trip to British Columbia. We stopped for gas and while stretching our legs noticed a stuffed Great Horned Owl in the station office. Later that day, stopped for lunch at a restaurant and they had a stuffed Great Horned owl on the wall. We saw several others that week, and thought it unusual. The last night on the way home, we camped next to a Canadian couple. I asked about the significance of the mounted owls. The fellow said he couldn't think of any special reason to have one, although his Grandma had one! So, does anyone have an answer for the love of stuffed owls in BC?

I house sat for an elderly man in Richfield,MN.
His Sons family there had an old stuffed/ mounted owl.
1970s era

Not sure what the big attraction was/is but I've had this guy for MANY years! Have to get a govt. permit to have one in Alberta.

I wonder, if the marten fought so energetically, that they either wriggled out of the owls talons, or the owl just dropped them in the scuffle . Another guess to add to the question . Why, even Jack could barely "fly the plane" with one bouncing off the windows !

Yeah I can imagine a struggling marten in your talons is a challenge for sure. I'll bet a lot get dropped.

As far as flying the plane with a marten running laps over your shoulder and under the panel could be distracting to say the least ! I was in a C180 once when a domestic cat got loose inside. That got pretty sporty for a while too.

was out fishing one evening just before dark. We were rowing along the shoreline which was a steep hardwood bank. there was a bat flying around us snapping up hatching insects from the lakes surface. The bat screwed up and ended up getting to close to the lakes surface and next thing ya know hes flapping and trying to swim to shore. It was about 150 ft to shore. I asked my buddy if maybe we should rescue the little guy. Before I got an answer a Great Horned Owl came out of the woods and grabbed the bat right off the water and flew back to the woods.
My buddy says " guess we don't have to worry about that bat".

Right next to the Ram Pen.

Jack....what's the folk lore about owls in your yard ?

Dirty D - Excellent story sir! Thanks.

I've got a similar story that you may appreciate. Many years ago (summer 1974), I was working in the Snake River Canyon in west-central Idaho. One of my duties was to collect bats for identification. There were about 10 different species. Some were very difficult to identify, so having dead samples in hand was very important. I did a lot of mist-netting, but relied heavily on a 12-gauge. That was back in the time before white-nose syndrome, and killing bats was not taboo as it is today. I used to shoot over water quite often, as it was easier to find the downed bat. One evening I shot a bat that was downed on the water, and before I could retrieve it, a western screech owl plucked it off the water's surface. I also had smallmouth bass take them periodically.

Nessy -

The only thing I've heard is if an owl is hooting from your yard, someone's gonna die. We have Great Horned owls, screech owls, long-eared owls, and pygmy owls calling from our yard multiple times a week, and Yep, sure enough, our weekly newspaper confirms that someone died that week.

Jack

Snowy owls will visit us in Pa in the wintertime, spend a few weeks and then head back to Canada. I hear the Barred owls frequently but theyre usually difficult to spot

Excellent photos Squaretimber. Thanks!

When my folks were PEACE CORPS volunteers near the Haitian border of the Dominican republic they told me that the campesinos around there went out of there way to kill all owls they spotted out of the belief that they were actually Haitian VooDoo practitioners in owl disguise coming around to create mischief.

Sharon -

You mentioned the different shades of great horned owls throughout their wide range. Even individuals can vary quite a bit from the same location, even within the same clutch. I picked up and photographed these two GHOs last winter near my house that were fresh roadkills. There's quite a difference between the two.