Air Date: Week of February 7, 2025

A great horned owl perches on a pipe. (Photo: © Bill Weaver, Courtesy of BirdNote®)

Some owls, like Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls, are happy to call our cities home. There’s plenty of rats and squirrels to eat, and BirdNote’s Michael Stein offers some tips on how to spot these urban owls.

Transcript

BELTRAN: Owls are famous for their stealth, with feathers that barely make a sound. Even so, BirdNote’s Michael Stein has some tips on how you can spot one.

BirdNote®
City Owls
Written by Bob Sundstrom

[Barred Owl duet, https://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/175898, 0.36-.41]

You don't need to travel to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – or even to a remote forest – to see owls. Some owls – including big birds like Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls – live in the city. Owls are hunters, and there’s a lot to eat in the city — like rats or even squirrels!

Great Horned Owls favor urban parks, cemeteries, and botanical gardens, places with big trees. They are huge owls with pointy ear-like tufts, and they roost during the day in trees and hunt at night over open areas nearby. Look for something shaped like an enormous house cat sitting upright on a branch. At night, listen for these mellow hoots:

[Great Horned Owl pair, https://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/50548, 0.16-.21]
Barred Owls sound rowdy by comparison.

[Barred Owl duet, https://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/175898, 0.36-.41]

The Barred Owl also likes parks, especially with open spaces below the trees, because it hunts mostly inside the woods. It’s big, too, with a smoothly rounded head, and it sometimes perches down low where it’s easy to spot.

We hope you can find owls near where you live. Take a pair of binoculars, so you can watch them at a distance that’s comfortable for you – and for the owl.

I'm Michael Stein.

[Barred Owl duet, https://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/175898, 0.36-.41]

BirdNote is supported by American Bird Conservancy, dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. Learn more at abcbirds dot org.
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by Gregory F Budney and David S Herr.
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Content Director: Jonese Franklin

© 2017 Tune In to Nature.org November 2017/2019/2024 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# owl-09 -2017-11-13 owl-09

BELTRAN: For pictures, glide on over to our website, LOE dot org.

 

Links

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