Owls

Few birds are as mysterious as owls. Their mystique dates back centuries and is deeply rooted in cultural reverence, folklore, myth, and sometimes fear. 

Greeks, in awe of owls’ incredible nighttime hunting skills, believed they served as a perfect symbol for Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. Therefore, a Greek coin, the tetradrachm, was minted with the helmeted goddess depicted on one side and the owl on the flipside. Similarly, ancient Romans believed owls had the ability to gaze into the future, making the screech owl a suitable symbolic companion for Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and prophecy.

Owl myths also abounded amongst Native Americans. Revered as messengers from the spirit world, they were considered both sacred and supernatural. Owl feathers were carried into battle as symbols of power to see in the darkness and to move with stealth.

Others associated owls and their preference for hunting at night with misfortune. Gaelic settlers in North America brought the folklore of the Cailleach — as being associated with hardship, sometimes personified by an owl — to the Appalachians. Mountain legend held that an owl hooting at midnight foretold death.

At the root of these many legends and myths is an owl’s spectacularly evolved hunting prowess.

Hearing in 3-D

Owls have uncanny visual acuity. Their eyes take up a lot of real estate in their skulls and account for 5 percent of their entire body weight. Compare that to a human’s eyeballs, which tip the scale at just 0.0003 percent. 

Owls — like most birds of prey — have forward facing, binocular vision. Owls’ eyes are tubular, supported by bony structures, called sclerotic rings, that hold them in place. Humans can roll their eyes, but owls’ eyes are forward fixed, boosting depth perception. However, an owl can rotate its head 270 degrees while remaining fully stationary.

Both human and owl retinas contain two types of light-sensitive cells. Rods detect movement and light, and cones detect color variations. Human eyes have a 20-to-one rod to cone ratio; owls have a 30-to-one ratio. 

An owl’s ears, nestled within feathers on each side of its head, are positioned asymmetrically, allowing them to triangulate sound. When noise reaches one ear before the other, by tipping its head until the sound reaches both ears, an owl can pinpoint the location of scurrying prey.

“Owls can hear in 3-D,” said MDC Private Land Conservationist Meagan Duffee-Yates, a long-time falconer.

Additionally, an owl’s iconic ring of face feathers, called a facial disk, captures and channels sound to its ears. 

“It’s like a human cupping their hands behind their ears,” she said.

Wing structure also adds to an owl’s hunting abilities. A large surface area provides a quiet glide instead of a noisy flap. The leading edges of an owl’s wing feathers are softly serrated, muffling the sound of rapid air flow. Secondary trailing feathers are fringed, breaking sound waves. Down feathers on an owl’s wings and legs absorb remaining sound frequencies.

Other distinct features that contribute to the bird’s hunting prowess are its formidable sharp claws, or talons. They not only assist with hunting but are used as defensive weapons. Its toes — two that point forward, one that points backward, and one that can point either way — allow for greater dexterity. With two pointed forward and two pointed back, an owl can achieve a better grasp of its prey and a broad, lethal strike. Even its perch is affected by the placement of its toes — three forward and one back make it more secure.

And while all these features combine to create an indisputable apex predator, owls make poor hunting partners, Duffee-Yates said.

“You’d want to be as wise as a crow, not an owl,” she said, noting that owls are stubborn and hard to train as hunting companions, but on their own, they are extraordinary, winged predators.

An Owl’s Life

According to the International Ornithological Committee, there are 254 recognized owl species in the world, 19 of which are native to North America. Missouri is home to eight species, four of which — American barn owls, barred owls, eastern screech-owls, and great horned owls — make their homes year-round in the Show-Me state. Three species — northern saw-whet owls, long-eared owls, and short-eared owls — are migratory, spending time here in the winter, but nesting farther north. Snowy owls occasionally visit.

Courtship rituals, initiated by male vocalizations, vary among owls and some add flight antics. Males may proffer a meal to a prospective mate, which if accepted, is often followed by copulation and a preening cuddle.

Generally monogamous during a given breeding season, a lifetime bond often persists with nonmigrating species like barred owls, eastern screech-owls, and great horned owls. If food is plentiful, a female northern saw-whet owl may leave her mate to raise the couple’s owlets while she seeks another partner.

Owls do not build nests but rather take advantage of hollow trees, other natural features, and nests built by other birds. They are very territorial during breeding season and may perform flight displays and wing clapping to ward off intruders. In some cases, mated pairs perform a warning duet.

Owl eggs are typically round and white. Depending on species, owls lay two to six eggs, though barn owls sometimes have larger clutches. Incubation lasts an average of 30 days. Barn owls lay their eggs at intervals, causing them to hatch at intervals. The time it takes owlets to fledge — or leave the nest — varies depending on species.

Owl parents tear up larger prey but eventually feed owlets whole smaller rodents, birds, insects, and reptiles. Digestible tissues pass through owl gizzards and indigestible bones, feathers, teeth, and fur are regurgitated as brown or gray cylindrical “pellets” by both owlets and adult owls.

Studying Owls

Largely illusive nocturnal creatures, owls have remained a creature of mystery, heightening their allure. But recent technologies, such as nest cams, infrared cameras, radio tagging, and satellite telemetry, have started to illuminate owl behavior. 

MDC, with help from Master Naturalists and Missouri State University (MSU) students, have been able to shed light on nesting habits of barn owls.

In 2014, nest boxes were installed in barns to attract voracious predators for rodent control. Noting the program’s success, boxes were again built and given away. MDC Natural History Biologist Rhonda Rimer has played a key role in recent nest box surveys.

“We could tell by the layers of pellets in the older boxes that quite a few had been in use for a long time,” Rimer said.

“When placing boxes, we install them pretty high up in barns to protect them from weather and to give the occupants a defendable space,” she said of the propensity of other owls, raccoons, cats, snakes, and hawks to plunder nests. “If barn owls were nearby when new boxes were installed, colonization occurred in as little as 30 days.”

Before constructing a device from a cell phone, a rubber glove, duct tape, and PVC pipe to peek inside the small square entrance to the boxes, Rimer said they climbed ladders and knocked on them before visually checking for occupation.

“Without conclusive data, barn owls had long been presumed to be the only owl that nest year-round in Missouri,” Rimer said. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve documented nest activity in every month but December.”

An injured nestling owl discovered in mid-January 2025, proved year-round nesting.

Under the direction of now-emeritus MSU Biology Professor Janice Greene, students completed a diet study, monitoring pellets in a subset of the owl boxes. 
They discovered that over 70 percent of barn owls’ diets in the study area consisted of prairie and woodland voles.

Once a Missouri species of conservation concern, barn owls have been removed from that list. Owl distribution and history are important to understand for ecological considerations and conservation efforts.

Historically, few northern saw-whet owl migratory records existed with roadkill being the most frequent source of confirmation.

Suspecting that northern saw-whet owls frequently migrated into — and farther south from — their breeding grounds in the Great Lakes area than documented, Dana Ripper and Ethan Duke, co-directors of the Missouri River Bird Observatory (MRBO), and Mitchell Pruitt, an ecologist with the University of Arkansas and founder of the Ozark Bird Conservancy (OBC), have conducted migratory banding of northern saw-whet owls during the birds’ fall migration.

MRBO bandings were conducted in central Missouri — near Marshall — and MRBO headquarters in Arrow Rock. OBC bandings took place in the interior highlands of Missouri and Arkansas.

Because northern saw-whets do not breed in the fall and winter when in Missouri, they have no need to vocalize, making them more difficult to detect.

Tracking and banding these small owls is part of a national effort by Project OwlNet, a cooperative initiative of hundreds of owl-migration researchers. 

Fine mist nets are set up and alluring male owl vocalization recordings are played to lure the little owls. Before being banded, captured owls are weighed and sexed using a measurement of mass to wing length as females are larger. Because owls don’t annually molt all their feathers, UV lights shown on the undersides of their wings that reveal the presence of fluorescent porphyrin pigments — seen as bright pink by humans — are used to determine age. Younger owls have more pigmentation.

Between 2010 and 2022, MRBO caught and banded 224 owls, at first with weeks-long dedicated events, and beginning in 2014, as part of their broad educational programming.

Over the last 10 years, OBC has captured and banded 150 saw-whets.

In the fall of 2024, Pruitt fitted five saw-whets with transmission devices that would “ping” on Motus Wildlife Tracking System’s automated radio towers, an international array of bird migration tracking stations. His effort yielded initial northern migration information the following spring.

Jan Wiese-Fales is a freelance writer who gardens in Howard County and enjoys camping, hiking, floating, and photographing Missouri’s wild outdoors. 

Snowy Owls

Snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) spend their breeding season in the Arctic Circle. While most owls are nocturnal hunters, these splendid white birds — 20- to 25-inches tall with wingspans up to 5 feet — are diurnal, which means they hunt during the day. Small mammals — primarily lemmings but also Arctic hares — and other birds are on the menu. 

Most snowy owls have some black barring on their feathers, which is more substantial in younger and female birds. A surfeit of insulating feathers, which makes them one of the heaviest of all owls, includes plumage on their legs and feet. Bristles on snowy owls’ beaks aid in sensing close range objects, and fluffy facial discs make their golden eyes look almost human. Vocalizations range from screeching or barking to courtship hooting and cooing.

With a historical winter range that dips down to the Great Lakes, snowy owls are sometimes sighted as far south as Georgia.

Increased southern migrations occur every three to five years in what is known as an irruption. 

“We recently had a question about snowy owl irruptions,” said Missouri State Ornithologist Kristen Heath-Acre. “There is a larger dispersal of snowy owls from the arctic when there is an excess population.” 

A food surplus results in higher nest success — and a subsequent increase in snowy owlets — causing migration to stretch farther south due to competition for food and space. In Missouri, snowy owls dine on squirrels, muskrats, other rodents, rabbits, mink, and birds. 

“People generally think of owls as forest birds,” Heath-Acre said. “But some owls, like barn, short-eared, and long-eared owls, may hunt on prairies or open fields.”

Migratory snowy owls also hunt Missouri’s grasslands, flying at more than 50 miles per hour in pursuit of prey. 

In December 2024, results of a multi-year international status assessment of snowy owls by researchers with Project SNOWstorm and the International Snowy Owl Working Group in Norway were published in Bird Conservation International. 

Twenty years ago, scientists estimated snowy owl numbers at 290,000, an inflated approximation due to over-counting caused by the birds’ nomadic tendencies. SNOWstorm’s revised estimation predicts 14,000 to 28,000 mated pairs worldwide. Indicators point to a one-third decline in population in the past 25 to 30 years.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now lists snowy owls as a species of conservation concern.

Year-round Resident Owls

American barn owls (Tyto furcata) nest in farm structures and hollow trees near open fields, including cropland, throughout the state. They have light-colored, heart-shaped faces and dark eyes with light-colored breasts. Gray- and cinnamon-colored feathers feature black markings and white specks. Medium-sized barn owls have a wingspan of up to 4 feet and a length of 16 inches. Their voices are harsh and screeching, reminiscent of red-tailed hawks, and they dine on small rodents, birds, insects, bats, and reptiles.

Barred owls (Strix varia) occur throughout Missouri. Though rarely seen, their series of hoots — hoo hoo h’hoo, hoo hoo h’hoo-ahh — is one of the most familiar and is interpreted as, “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” Large owls at 21 inches, they have a wingspan of 4 feet. Brown feathers are streaked with white and facial discs feature darker concentric rings of feathers surrounding dark eyes. Barred owls prefer forested areas near water, and make homes in tree hollows, using the same space year after year. They prey on small rodents, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, frogs, snakes, insects, crayfish, and fish.

Eastern screech-owls (Megascops asio) are small owls measuring 8.5 inches with 20- to 22-inch wingspans. Rather than a screech, their calls are described as a whinny trill, or tremolo, which is likened to the sound of mating toads. They can occur in three color “morphs” — gray, brown, or red — all with golden eyes and ear tufts, which are not always erect and visible. Screech owls prefer tree hollows in a wide variety of habitats, including urban areas, often taking advantage of abandoned woodpecker nests, favoring cedars and pines. Because of their small size, they occupy a rare niche among nighttime predators, dining on insects and small rodents.

Great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) are the largest North American owl. Identifiable by wide-set ear tufts, they measure 22 inches with 5-foot wingspans. Feathers are mottled brown in color with brown barred underparts and white throats. Gold eyes are set in rust-colored facial disks. Great horned owls reuse hawk and squirrel nests, or seek large tree hollows close to open fields for hunting. Calls are a series of three to eight loud and low-pitched hoots. Though they eat small mammals and birds, they can go after larger prey such as muskrats, rabbits, geese, groundhogs, and, because owls have a poor sense of smell, even skunks. 

Migratory Owls

Northern saw-whet owls (Aegolius acadicus) get their name from their calls, which sounds like a saw being sharpened on a whetstone. Their more common call is too-too-too. Missouri’s smallest owls, they are only 8 inches in length with 17- to 18-inch wingspans. Thought to mostly occupy the northern two-thirds of the state during migration, tagging efforts show they occur much farther south. Saw-whets are reddish brown with white striped breasts and round heads that looks too large for their short-legged little bodies. They seclude themselves in dense evergreens or ground covers, hunting mostly at dusk and dawn.

Long-eared owls (Asio otus) are slender with tall ear tufts and golden yellow eyes set in rust-colored facial disks. Medium-sized owls, they measure 15 inches with wingspans of 3 feet. Their coloring is buff and brown with dark mottling. They are known to roost communally in dense woods and thickets but need open space to hunt, hovering low above the ground in search of small mammals, snakes, lizards, small birds, and insects. Their flight is described as buoyant and mothlike. Calls are long repeated whoo, with additional calls described as squeals and dog barks in between. Long-ear owls occur statewide but are rare and a species of conservation concern in Missouri.