I first heard the strange noises in late June: whistling squawks that sounded like sea gulls five hundred miles off course. The calls began at sundown every evening and continued throughout the night. I couldn’t imagine what besides an owl would make so much noise after dark. But owls hoot. Right? Couldn’t possibly be owls, I thought.
- Great Horned Owl Near Burns, Oregon (2006). Photo: Jerry Gaffke
Funny how assumptions muddle perceptions.
One night, we arrived back home after dark, and our headlight beams illuminated three owls on the garden fence posts. One part of my brain told me they must be the squawkers, but another part remained skeptical. The sound still didn’t fit my image of what owls do.
I finally reconciled the sound to the mental picture several days later when the owls came out a little early. I had enough light to see them through the binoculars. Sure enough, their beaks opened and closed in rhythm with the sound. They looked like cats meowing for dinner.
I identified the birds as Great-Horned Owls (Bubo viringianus) – the most widespread owl in the Americas – and began researching owl vocalizations.
Hooting is only one of many sounds made by great horned owls. And even that can vary in number and pitch. They also hiss, screech, chitter, and or course, squawk. This recording from The Owl Pages comes closest to what I heard, though it’s a little lower in pitch and doesn’t have a whistling tone:
(If the media player doesn’t load properly, you can listen to it here).
Research is underway to better understand great-horned owl vocalizations. But there seems to be a consensus that at least some of the squawking comes from juveniles begging their parents to feed them. Over time, they become more self-reliant and explore further from the family group. But they may continue to beg for food until the parents breed again in the winter.
Our young owl neighbors are getting more adventurous. We rarely see them now. And some nights, we don’t hear them either. But other nights, we welcome back the cacophony of hoots and squawks all around us.
Young great-horned owls may drift a few years before staking out their own territory, finding a mate and breeding. They move as far as 150 miles away from their original nest.
Mated owls are permanent residents, so perhaps we’ll hear another group of fledglings next year.
For more information:
Alice the owl’s blog (about caring for and learning from an injured great-horned owl):
Cross-posted as Biodiversions at The Clade.
Thanks for the information you placed regarding the Great Horned Owls. We live in Ridgefield , WA by a refuge with woods behind us and I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what kind of bird has been making that squawking noise all night every night.
I was very excited to read your post and hear the confirmation. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Mary. Glad to know my post was useful. It’s funny how there’s not more information out there about owls squawking.