“Barred Owl Hoots for You All”

This owl has eyes that stare into your soul depths and a hooting call that’s part of the forested swamp soundtrack, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” Barred Owls are mottled brown and white overall, with dark brown, almost black, eyes that glisten. The underparts are mostly marked with vertical brown bars on a white background, while the upper breast is crossed with horizontal brown bars—hence their name. The wings and tail are barred brown and white. Originally a bird of the Eastern US, the Barred owl spread to the Pacific Northwest and southward to California in the 20th century. They otherwise hardly migrate more than several miles each year. 

Barred Owls live in mixed forests, usually near water, where they can access suitable tree cavities for nesting and diversity of prey. Barred Owls typically nest in a natural cavity, 20–40 feet high in a large tree. They may also use stick platform nests built by other animals (including hawks, crows, ravens, and squirrels) and human-made nest boxes. Barred Owls may prospect a nest site as early as a year before using it. No one knows whether the male or the female chooses the site. When fledging, Barred owlets can climb tree bark using their talons and beaks and display ‘branching’—the behavior where young owls, before they can fly well, move from their nest to nearby branches, exploring and strengthening their flight muscles, often returning to the nest afterward.

Diet is small mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and invertebrates; their greatest predator is the fellow Great Horned owl. Barred owls will move to another location in their territory to avoid them.

Barred Owls roost on branches and in tree cavities during the day and hunt by night. Territorial all year round, they chase away intruders while hooting loudly. They are even more aggressive during nesting season (particularly the females), sometimes striking intruders with their feet. Pairs probably mate for life, raising one brood each year. Their nests are preyed upon by other large owls and hawks, as well as by weasels and raccoons. When humans interfere with a nest, the parent may flee, perform a noisy distraction display with quivering wings, or even attack.

These owls have been around for a long time. Pleistocene fossils of Barred Owls, at least 11,000 years old, have been dug up in Florida, Tennessee, and Ontario. Until the twentieth century, Barred Owls were residents of old, undisturbed forests in eastern North America. They were probably restricted from moving into northwestern boreal forests because of frequent forest fires. But fire suppression—along with tree planting in the Great Plains—allowed them to spread northward and westward during the past century. They eventually expanded south along the West Coast as far as California, where they began competing with Spotted Owls. Barred Owls have displaced these slightly smaller and less aggressive owls and have been hybridizing with them, further threatening the already compromised Spotted Owl population. Barred Owls are forest birds and tend to occur in mature forests because they need large, dead trees for nest sites. These requirements make them sensitive to logging expansion. For this reason, the Barred Owl is often used as an indicator species for managing old forests.

Sources: Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Original mixed media on raw stretched canvas with hard maple float frame.

Alternative hardwood frame available upon request at no extra cost. Email with inquiries.