The Great Horned Owl

The Great Horned Owl

The Great Horned Owl comes from the Strigidae family. Its scientific name is Bubo Virginianus. Bubo comes from the Latin word meaning "owl" or from the Greek word for "eagle owl" used by the 1st Century Roman naturalist Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus). Virginianus, meaning "of Virginia" is where the first specimen of Great Horned Owls was collected. Some other names for the Great Horned Owl are; Grand-duc d'Amerique, in French, and in Spanish is Busho cornudo. The common name "horned owl" comes from the large ear tufts. It is a solitary creature that likes to inhabit unsettled places. It is the fiercest and most powerful of the owls.

Great Horned Owls have a very large range. They are all over the United States and most of Canada, and southward to Central and South America to the Straits of Magellan. For their summer range, they resident across North America from northern Alaska and Canada through Mexico and Nicaragua and also in South America to Tierra del Fuego. They are found in dense woodlands of hard woods and conifers, along cliffs and rocky canyons, desert canyons, and in forest openings. They can even be found in wooded city parks, in caves, or on the ground. They prefer open areas to dense woodlands. The owls that live in the far north move southward in fall or winter.

The Great Horned Owl is best known for the large tufts feathers on its ears. It is sometimes called the cat owl because of its cat like ears, eyes, shape of head and appearance when huddled up in a nest. It has an orange facial disk outlined in black. The upper parts of the owl's body are brown with gray-brown mottling, and it's dark under parts make it's throat standout. The patch of white feathers on the brown chest is called a "gular". It's big and bulky and weighs 3-4 pounds. The great horned owl measures 18-25 inches in length and has a wingspan of approximately 36-60 inches from tip to tip. The female is larger than the male. They have four toes on each foot like most birds, but instead of having one in back, an owls outer toe is reversible. It can rotate so that there are two toes in front and two in back. This helps it grip a perch and also creates a bigger grip to catch prey. One of the most distintive parts of an owl are its eyes which have circles of radiating feathers around them giving them a wide-eyed look. Their eyes are yellow with black pupils that allow a great amount of light to pass through so it can see in dark conditions. They can see during the day, but have better vision at night. Owls eyes face forwards (unlike other birds). This gives them "binocular vision", 100 times more powerful than ours, with very precise depth perception. When they blink, an internal eyewash cleans their eyes. Their eyes are protected when flying by a see-through "nictitating membrane" that also protects the eyes from bright daylight. They cannot move their eyes within their sockets, so in order to look around they have to move their entire head. Owls cannot rotate their head completely around! They can rotate their heads 270 degrees because of the extra vertebra in their necks. The Great Horned Owl can live greater then 12 years and in captivity they have lived up to 29 years old!

Great Horned Owls mainly hunt at night, but may hunt in day light hours. While they are perched on a branch or rocky alcove, they listen for sounds that "betray a creatures presence." They have an incredible sense of hearing that allows them to hunt at night. Their ears are off-set on the sides of the head and the openings are slightly titlted in different directions. Often the right ear is longer and set higher on the skull. They also have soft feathers around the openings that act as a funnel for sound. This makes the owl able to use triangulation to locate the source of a sound when they can not see their prey. They can pinpoint the direction and distance of the sound. Once they pinpoint the sound, it silently swoops in (soft feathers deaden the sound of flight), spreads it talons and pounces on its prey.