The Barred Owl asks the forest a question all Michigan campers learn: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?" This round-headed, dark-eyed owl — no ear tufts — haunts mature woods and wooded swamps, hunting from low perches at night and sometimes calling in broad daylight. Pairs are intensely vocal, and a duet can dissolve into a chorus of caterwauling that sounds more like monkeys than owls.
Barred Owls are homebodies, holding the same few hundred acres for years and nesting in big tree cavities. They prosper in Michigan's river-bottom forests and northern woods — anywhere old trees stand near water.
Mice and voles chiefly, plus frogs, crayfish (a specialty — some birds' belly feathers stain pink from them), fish, and songbirds. They hunt by ear from a perch, dropping silently on sound alone.
That's the Barred Owl's signature eight-noter. Learn it once and you'll recognize it forever — and they'll often answer a decent human imitation.
Barred Owls have round, tuftless heads and dark brown eyes; Great Horneds have ear tufts and yellow eyes. The Great Horned is also larger and dominates — even displaces — its smaller cousin.
For Barred Owls, yes — they call and occasionally hunt by day, especially in dim weather or when feeding young. A daytime Barred Owl isn't automatically sick or in trouble.
They are. Numbers stay fairly steady from month to month, and the birds do not leave the state, though individuals shift around locally between nesting cover, woodlots, and feeders as food supplies change.
Owlets are covered in white down with dark eyes and a soft barred pattern coming in on the wings. They branch out of the nest cavity before they can fly and give a rasping, hissing call quite unlike the adult's hooting.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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