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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Listening to the barred owl

Who-cooks-for-you? Inquiring owls want to know

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 3/11/21

A few nighttime inquiries preceded the appearance of a barred owl in the yard on a recent morning. “Who-cooks-for-you?” is the distinctive vocalization of this mid-sized owl, which is …

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Listening to the barred owl

Who-cooks-for-you? Inquiring owls want to know

Posted

A few nighttime inquiries preceded the appearance of a barred owl in the yard on a recent morning. “Who-cooks-for-you?” is the distinctive vocalization of this mid-sized owl, which is relatively common here in the North Country, where it prefers large areas of mature, unbroken forest. It always makes me think of my wife Jodi who, in fact, does the cooking around here.
We hear barred owls inquiring occasionally around our house on the eastern edge of the Lost Lake Swamp, although we see them only rarely. The barred owl is generally active at night, when it preys on small nocturnal mammals, including mice, voles, and flying squirrels. Every once in a while, usually about this time of year, when I assume the supply of small mammals might be running low, one will show up in the yard during the day, presumably in hopes of catching a red squirrel, which are probably tough to find at night when they are curled up sleeping in a tree cavity. Thanks to our bird feeders, our yard is an excellent spot to hunt for red squirrels, and I certainly wouldn’t be a bit perplexed if an owl, or any predator for that matter, managed to cart away a half dozen or so. By late winter, with their regular food sources disappearing and the spring hormones kicking into gear, the red squirrels here are, let’s just say, a bit out of control. Once, many years ago, a barred owl spent days hanging around the feeders, looking increasingly listless, to the point I worried it was starving. So, I sacrificed a red squirrel and attached it to a string and tossed it on the ground near the owl and started pulling it along the top of the snow. Like a shot, the listless owl sprang to life and grabbed that squirrel faster than I could blink. At least he ate well that day.
We hear barred owls only occasionally here in part because they occupy large territories— about 700 acres or more depending on the quality of the habitat, based on available research. That’s a lot of ground to cover, so most of the time, even our resident owls wouldn’t be within earshot.
They tend to vocalize more this time of year, however, as they are now in the midst of courting activities ahead of the nesting season, like most owls in our area. A few years ago, our resident owls obviously nested nearby since we heard them every night for weeks. Owls have a wide range of interesting, sometimes eerie, calls and hoots, so having them in the neighborhood always makes things interesting at night. It’s the main reason I look forward to being able to open the windows again at night once the warmer weather arrives. There’s a whole nocturnal world out there in the woods, that most of us never experience, except through those night sounds we hear from bed.
Unlike the owl of many years ago, the one that showed up recently didn’t seem listless. It was still relatively wary when I went outside, camera in hand to try to capture a few images. It certainly looked sleepy, but that’s not unusual when you see nocturnal creatures during the day. I prefer not to have my picture taken at bedtime either.
Perhaps because barred owls are nocturnal, we don’t know as much about their behavior as we do with diurnal (active during the day) birds. But biologists believe that barred owls mate for life, and both the male and female are actively involved in raising the young. As with most raptors, the 2-3 eggs that a female barred own normally lays in the spring hatch in a staggered way. That means one of the owlets will be the largest, with the second in line somewhat smaller, followed by the runt of the brood if they lay three eggs. The larger owlet dominates the nest and gets most of the food. When prey is abundant, all the nestlings are likely to survive, but when food is scarce, the staggered hatching helps to ensure that at least the oldest bird survives. Nature may seem cruel, but it always has its reasons.
The barred owl can be fairly easily distinguished from most other owls found in the North Country. It’s much larger than the small saw-whet or the rare boreal owls, also found here. It’s smaller than both the great horned and the great gray owl, and it lacks the ear tufts of the horned owl and the prominent white “mustache” of the great gray. Both of these larger owls also have yellow eyes, another distinguishing characteristic from the black-eyed barred owl.
The barred owl used to reside primarily in the forests of the eastern U.S., but fire suppression and tree planting in the Great Plains enabled this species to expand its range all the way to the West Coast, where it now competes with its very close, and controversial, relative, the spotted owl, potentially contributing to the spotted owl’s endangered status. The two species are so closely related that they also interbreed, which could eventually cause the disappearance of the spotted owl and the generation of a new species. Now there’s something to think about…