Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Baby Great Horned Owl

By: Tom Berg

Great Horned Owls are first-rate predators. They are the undisputed rulers of the nighttime sky throughout North America, and with wingspans of four to five feet who can argue? They often kill and eat other large birds like hawks, ospreys and even other owls. But those are the large adult owls. What about baby great horned owls?

Most great horned owls around the Midwest mate in January or February, and babies are usually hatched sometime in February or March. There are typically two eggs per clutch, so the parents have two extra mouths to feed. And those babies are always hungry, too!  The young owls grow fast, and when they are about six weeks old they move off of the nest onto nearby branches in the nest tree.

The growth rate for baby owls is directly dependent on how much food is available.  Well-fed owls fledge quicker than owls where food is scarce. Owls are efficient hunters, and they catch everything from mice and rats to rabbits, skunks and birds. They also eat snakes, lizards, fish and even insects like beetles, cicadas, grasshoppers and moths. All of these foods are fed to the hungry babies.

Small prey like mice and voles are swallowed whole by the young owls. Larger animals like rabbits and skunks are torn into bite-size pieces by the parents. A neighbor in Indiana recently had two baby owls living in one of his trees, and the pile of animal parts under the tree told the story of just what his young owls were eating. There was the remains of a rat, a blackbird, a wing from a Cooper’s hawk, and the heads of two adult rabbits. The rabbit heads were too large to swallow whole, so they were discarded.  Those baby owls were eating well!

Baby great horned owls start making short flights to neighboring trees when they are about seven weeks old, and they can fly at 9-10 weeks of age. They are often still fed by their parents for several months, though, until they become fierce hunters themselves.

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