Barred owls (Strix varia) make a distinctive and unmistakable call: Hoo hoo hoo HOO. Hoo hoo hoo HOO. It’s often described as sounding like Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-ew? Also called hoot owls, they make other sounds, too, often described as catlike screams, monkey chatter, demonic laughter, cackles, caws, hisses, clicks and gurgles. They are quite noisy. The calls are so common at night and so easy for humans to reproduce that Harriet Tubman imitated their sounds to alert freedom-seekers whether it was safe to come out of hiding. Barred owls are most noisy before breeding and after the young have left the nest.
Unlike many birds, these do not migrate. They like to live in areas with large old trees that provide nesting cavities, have fewer low branches that impede hunting and provide security from predators. In New England, they are often found in swampy areas or semi-open wooded areas such as parks with large trees. Suburban areas can be good habitats for them because barred owls benefit from human-caused changes to the environment such as rodent infestations. Some studies have shown that barred owl populations increase faster in suburban areas than in old-growth forests. There are dangers in suburban areas, too: The owls can be killed by collisions with cars or from rat poison, and there have been documented cases of deaths from poison locally.
These birds rest on a perch to hunt, using their superb vision to look for movement on the ground. When they detect prey, they swoop in silently and squeeze the prey in their talons before eating – mostly small ground-dwelling mammals such as rats, mice and voles that are also nocturnal, and therefore active at the same time. Barred owls eat small prey whole, head first. If the prey is too large to swallow whole, the owl will swallow just the head and leave behind the body for later. Barred owls regurgitate the fur, bones and other indigestible bits as pellets about the size of a human thumb: 2 inches long and an inch wide.
During the winter, barred owls may live almost exclusively on voles, mice and small rats, juveniles weighing less than 4 ounces. (They will even plunge into snow to capture mice or voles hidden inside snow tunnels.) Barred owls have relatively small feet, so their talons cannot grab prey large prey. They have four talons, two facing forward, one facing backward and one with a flexible joint that rotates forward or back. These talons encircle the prey and crush it. Owls have a locking mechanism in their feet that keeps their talons locked around a perch or prey. Unlike humans, they don’t need to use their muscles to continue gripping for a long time.
They will occasionally catch young rabbits, fledgling birds, frogs, salamanders, snakes, or even beetles and moths, slugs and worms, and sometimes wade into shallow water to capture fish or crayfish.
They will also capture night-roosting birds, which explains why flocks of birds will mob a barred owl if they spot one asleep in the daytime. According to John James Audubon: “The antipathy shewn to Owls by every species of day bird is extreme. They are followed and pursued on all occasions.” This mobbing behavior also explains why barred owls like to nest in old dense trees that hide them well as they sleep.
Birds preen themselves to keep their feathers clean and to apply preen oil to waterproof their feathers, using their beaks to collect preen oil from a gland at the base of their tails then spreading the oil evenly by pulling each feather through their bill from base to tip. It’s difficult for birds to spread preen oil over their necks and heads; most birds accomplish this by using their feet, though some species, especially those with strong family ties, preen one another. Barred owls preen their mates and their children.
Females lay two to three eggs from mid-March to mid-May in the hollow of a tree (or sometimes in an abandoned crow or hawk nest). The male feeds the female while she incubates the eggs for about a month. Once the eggs hatch, the female keeps the fluffy white chicks warm for about three more weeks while the male continues to deliver food to the nest. Then both parents hunt for the ever-hungry, growing youngsters. According to Audubon, “They are fed by the parents for a long time, standing perched, and emitting a hissing noise in lieu of a call. This noise may be heard in a calm night, for fifty or probably a hundred yards, and is by no means musical. To a person lost in a swamp, it is, indeed, extremely dismal.”
When they are about three weeks old, the chicks begin hopping and climbing around the tree branches. This movement is called branching. The youngsters stick together and do not return to the nest. Sometimes one falls to the ground, but most of the time it uses its talons and bill to climb back up into the tree. By about six weeks, the young can fly from branch to branch or even tree to tree. Because it is easier to fly downhill than up, the entire owl family tends to migrate downhill. At about three months of age, the young owls start hunting on their own, although the parents keep feeding them, too. By mid-autumn, the young are mostly independent. Barred owls reach maturity when they are 2 years old.
The barred owl is only mostly nocturnal; it hunts during the day more than most other owls. You are most likely to see it at dawn or dusk. But don’t expect to hear it as it flies. According to Audubon, “So very lightly do they fly, that I have frequently discovered one passing over me, and only a few yards distant, by first seeing its shadow on the ground, during clear moon-light nights, when not the faintest rustling of its wings could be heard.”
Reader photo
Martin Shields spotted this honeybee near the Charles River in September.
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Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
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