Great Horned Owl   

By Joshua

    I think Birds are amazing creatures.  All birds have feathers,  lay eggs with hard shells, and they  have two legs. Birds also have two wings and most of them can fly.  It is believed that most birds can see better than some animals including  people.  Birds have a good sense of hearing and are vertebrates, which means they have backbones.

     I'm interested in the great horned owl.  The great horned owl is robust brown, has bright yellow eyes and a V-shaped white bib.

  It also has a facial mask ringed in black.  They can also be grey, black or white and they have tufts of feathers not horns.  The great horned owl weighs 32-63½ oz.,  and it's size is 20-60in.  Their wingspan is 30-60in.  The great horned owls call is a hoot, high shriek, coo, and it snaps its beak.

   It lives from the tree limit in Canada to the southern part of South America.  They can be found in parks, suburbs, and woods.  Adults stay close to their breeding areas, but juveniles travel over 150 miles away in the fall.  The same adult pair of horned owls will maintain a specific territory for up to 8 years.  However the male and female stay together only during the nesting season.

   The great horned owls do not make their own nests.  They take over the nests of crows, Great blue herons, and hawks.  They may also settle in a squirrels nest,  hollows in trees, or rocky caves.  The female lays 2-4 white eggs.  It takes 26 to 35 days for the eggs to hatch.  The nesting season is January and February.  

    It has over 250 different prey.  Some of them include small mammals, snakes, insects, birds, porcupines, bats, and most other owls except the snowy owl.  Their favorite food is rabbit.  They swallow the  little prey hole and rip apart the larger prey.