“Short-Eared Owl, Open-Country Acrobat”

This open-country hunter is one of the world’s most widely distributed owls and among the most frequently seen in daylight. A true grassland owl, Short-Eared owls live in windswept prairies, meadows, shrubsteppe, and agricultural fields. Don’t look too eagerly for short the ear tufts, which are so short they’re often invisible. Their most striking features are their black-rimmed yellow eyes, like heavy eyeliner, staring out from a pale facial disk. These birds course silently over grasslands on broad, rounded wings, especially at dawn and dusk. They use acute hearing to hunt small mammals and birds, eating most of their prey whole, as with most owls.

The Short-eared Owl is one of the few owls to construct its own nest amid grasses and low plants: a bowl scraped out of the ground by the female and lined with grasses and downy feathers. The nest is sometimes built atop one from the previous year. They usually choose dry sites—often on small knolls, ridges, or hummocks—with enough vegetation to conceal the incubating female. 

During breeding season, Short-eared Owls are active all day and night; in winter, they favor low-light conditions. These owls forage mainly on the wing—flying low over the ground, sometimes hovering briefly at heights of 6–100 feet. They are incredibly maneuverable in the air, dropping suddenly to capture prey or climbing to avoid pursuers. They also soar hawklike on their long, broad wings, a flight mode they probably use for migratory travel. Breeding Short-eared Owls roost on the ground in tall grass. In winter, the owls may roost in trees (especially when snowy), sometimes with other species, such as Long-eared Owls. In territorial skirmishes, Short-eared Owls fly rapidly at each other, pulling up and presenting their talons at the last moment. Pairs of dueling or courting owls sometimes grapple with their talons, tumbling nearly to the ground before letting go. Short-eared Owls are loosely colonial breeders, usually seasonally monogamous. In courtship “sky dances,” males perform aerial acrobatics accompanied by singing and wing-clapping. Males feed incubating and brooding females and defend nests with distraction displays and vocalizations.

Short-eared Owl populations are difficult to estimate with certainty. There have been declines, particularly in Canada, but overall, populations have been stable between 1966 and 2019. Short-eared Owl is listed as a Common Bird in Steep Decline for species that are still too numerous or widely distributed to warrant Watch List status but have been experiencing troubling long-term declines. Short-eared Owls require large, uninterrupted tracts of open grasslands and appear to be particularly sensitive to habitat loss and fragmentation from agriculture, livestock grazing, recreation, and development. Habitat restoration programs, such as the Conservation and Wetland Reserve Programs, have shown some success in restoring suitable habitat for Short-eared Owls on private land. 

Sources: Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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