How to Identify Owls by Sight

Video Transcript

"Hello! Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Peterson and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, Massachusetts where we'll be talking about bird identification and some of the equipment and essential tools that are useful to get one started in this incredibly interesting pastime. Now, in addition to the diurnal birds of prey, the hawks, eagles, and falcons, there's another whole group of birds of prey, the owls. Owls, as most people realize are nocturnal and most of their hunting and most of their activity is actually undertaken during the cloak of darkness. For this rehem as is their actual appearance. But if one is fortunate enough to cation, the vocalizations or calls of owls, are often as useful or as important to identifying tome across an owl roosting during the day time in an evergreen tree or something of that sort, there are several key things are usually important to look for. One of them is whether or not they conspicuous tusk of feathers on top of their head that look like ears, but of course not their ear. Their ears are actually buried on the side of the head behind the eyes and the feathers. And also whether or not their eyes are dark or yellow. Most of our native eye species have yellow eyes, but several fairly common in wide spread species also have dark eyes. The barred owl, for example, is one here in Massachusetts that has dark eyes as is the much less common barn owl. The gray horned owl however, our largest residence species is one that has conspicuous yellow eyes, and as the name would suggest, very predominate feathers tusks on top of the head that look like ears. The screech owl, the eastern screech owl, is another one that has feather tusks on top of his head and is peculiar in that it comes in more than one color form or morph. Some screech owls are gray, some are rusty red. It's irrespective of whether they're males or females or adults or young. In the case of some owls like the short eared owl, quite an unusual species here in Massachusetts. They actually will nest on the ground and our inclined to hunt over open meadows, typically at dusk and at night. Very much like northern harrier a daytime hunting hawk only in the evening. So that in some cases we find hawks and owls occupying the same sort of niche within the habitat but at different times of day. For example, the red tailed hawk and the gray tail owl are often found in the same environments similar to the fact that the red shouldered hawk and the barn owl are often found in the same environments similar to the fact that the red shouldered hawk and the barn owl often like wooded swamps or their nesting and otherwise activities. "