16 May 2025
Remember when we watched Schenley Park’s great horned owls from late winter into early spring? Great horned owl fledging season is long past but woodland “earless” owls have just reached fledging time in Europe and North America. Let’s take a look at the family life of two species.
Tawny owls in Europe (Strix aluco) and barred owls in North America (Strix varia) are in the same genus Strix, the “earless” owls that inhabit forests, parks and suburbs. They resemble each other in appearance and breeding behavior. Both nest in tree holes, on snags or in structures such as nest boxes.
In the U.K. tawny owls reached hatch time in early to mid-April. This video posted on 17 April by Robert E Fuller shows three eggs hatching at a tawny owl nest in Yorkshire, UK.
By late April, tawny and barred owlets were half grown. Here’s an evening feeding early this month at the Wild Birds Unlimited Barred Owl nestcam in Indiana. As the video begins you can hear one of the parents hooting.
This month barred owlets in North America’s mid latitudes are “branching” before they fly. This 7-minute video shows a barred owlet doing some risky maneuvers in the trees.
Watch for behavior like this in a park or woodland near you. Keep looking up and you might see a branching owlet.
Thank you, Kate. I really enjoyed watching the owls and the owlets. I certainly will be looking up as I take my morning walk!
I love hearing the barred owls in our woods. We’ve heard them since we moved to our house in 2011. But I have yet to get a good look at one, except for one that was unexpectedly sitting in the middle of our driveway in the middle of the day when we returned home from shopping one day last year! Have no idea why it was there, but it didn’t seem harmed…it flew away when I started walking toward it.