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Barred Owl
(Strix varia)
This hapless barred
owl veered too close to on-coming traffic while fixated on a tasty
meal scuttling in a roadside ditch. Luckily, some warm-hearted passersby
rescued the shocked and banged up hoot owl from the side of the street
and brought him to Dove
Key Ranch, where he’s receiving much-needed cage rest and a plethora
of mice-filled meals. |
The Barred Owl
Photo courtesy Dove Key Ranch Wildlife Rehabilitation |
Barred Owls
in Texas:
Standing 16-25
inches tall and with wingspans of up to 4ft, these large, ear-tuft-less
raptors are commonly known as the eight hooter or rain, hoot, striped,
or wood owl. The “hoot” of their colloquial names derives from their
distinctive “who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all” call. Although
barred owls are nocturnal in their habits, they are easily flushed
from leafy roosts during the sunlight hours and are more often heard
than any other owl species during the day. If you are lucky enough
to stumble upon one in your wanderings through the dense woods of
eastern Texas, you may
be most begrudgingly regarded with gruff barking followed by an agitated
hoo-ah.
One glimpse into (huge) warm brown eyes and you’ll be even more certain
who your feathered find is. Barred owls are the only owls in the eastern
U.S. with chocolate-hued eyes. All other eastern hooters bear strikingly
bright yellow gazes. Whether they come in shades of coffee or sparks
of golden, owl eyes are so large that they leave almost no room for
accompanying muscles in the orbit to help adjust their direction with
respect to moving objects. Instead, owls are equipped with flexible
necks and can swivel their heads up to 270 degrees to follow targets
in motion. Owls’ sizeable eyes are packed with retinal rods, endowing
them with ten times the light sensitivity that human eyes possess
and providing them with excellent vision in the dimly lit conditions
that define their nocturnal predilections as well as in the sunshine
of the brightest day. However, you won’t be able to share the joys
of a freshly picked bouquet of Texas wildflowers with your keen-eyed
discovery: owls are nearly colorblind, having jammed light-sensitive
rods into their retinas to the exclusion of color- receptive cones.
Barred owls combine their exceptional vision with excellent hearing
and devastatingly powerful talons to proficiently slay a diverse array
of prey: from ground-dwelling rats, mice, voles, shrews, moles, rabbits,
weasels, young opossums, snakes, and lizards to arboreally-situated
bats, woodpeckers, jays, and, on rare occasions, smaller owls. Aqua-philiacs
that they are, eight hooters frequently wade into the water to dine
on fish, small turtles, frogs, salamanders, and even crayfish. To
top off the dusk or night’s foraging expedition, they may drop by
the local street lamp buffet to collect the moths, beetles, crickets,
grasshoppers, scorpions, and other invertebrates that are inevitably
drawn to these bright lights. Any indigestible material from the evening’s
fare, such as feathers, fur, or beetle carapaces, are clumped together
and regurgitated as hard pellets that litter the forest floor beneath
favorite roosting sites.
With a lifespan of up to ten years in the wild and a tendency to be
non-migratory, these long-lived homebodies may leave quite a pile
of owl pellets under that favorite perch. In addition to territorial
fidelity, barred owls will re-use the same productive tree cavity
or recommissioned crow, squirrel, or red-shouldered hawk nest year
after year to raise two to four awkward fuzzy puffs of chicks, which
will hopefully fledge within four to five weeks after hatching. Reenacting
the typical saga of many newly independent youth, the stripey-chested
juveniles return to mom and dad to beg for handouts until they learn
to be efficient hunters on their own.
Researchers have found that barred owl populations have been more
rapidly expanding in suburbia-infused areas than in Old Growth forests,
so unfortunate collisions between vehicles and eight-hooters, especially
non-roadwise young, are on the rise. When you’re driving at dusk or
after dark, keep an eye out for these hunters of the night. If an
owl is focused on its prey, it won’t be watching for you. And, if
you see one floundering by the side of the road, pull over and offer
assistance. A few minutes of your time and a call to a wildlife rehabilitator
may mean a second chance at a long life for the hooter and countless
generations of rodent-and bug-exterminating barred owls to come.
© Bonnie Wroblewski
http://www.dovekeywildlife.org
April 6, 2011
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