Image Copyright © 1997 Pieter van der Meulen
Four types of owls dwell in and around Waterford. In order
from largest to smallest they are
You might find one sitting on a fence post without realizing it's an
owl,
unless you meet it face-to-face. A pygmy owl is about the size of
a large sparrow and is easily mistaken for any of several more common
small
birds. This owl's typical call sounds like a sequence of short
toots,
and it earns its living by eating insects.
Barn
owls, or "barnies", have white coloration when viewed from
below,
with buff-colored shoulders and head. They range from about 18 to
20 inches tall with a wingspread of 41 to 47 inches. Tiny barbs
on
the first feather of their wings help to make their flight incredibly
silent.
Often one glides past in utter silence, passing like a white ghost in
the
reflected light of a street lamp.
However, they don't depend only on vision. Researchers have
found that barnies' hearing is so acute that they can accurately hunt
and
kill a mouse
in a totally darkened room. Through both sight and sound
available
they are magnificent hunters of nocturnal rodents; experiments show
that
it takes about 10 cats to match one barn owl.
Barnies are found world-wide, preferring to live in meadows and
at
the edges of wooded areas. Even city parks will do, but the blend
of grassland and oak woodland makes El Dorado Hills a natural home for
them. They like to nest in hollow trees, but even a hole in the
ground
or a building -- including a barn -- is a fine nesting spot. In
an
extreme case an estimated 100 barnies adopted an abandoned powerhouse
on
the grounds of Folsom Prison.
2 Photos courtesy of Douglas E. Trapp, whose Barn
Owl Information Page is an excellent source of additional
information
and photos.
Screech owls
are
about half the size of barnies, about 10 inches high
with a wingspread of 20 inches. In different color phases our
Western
screech owls can be brown or gray, but gray tends to predominate.
Their head sports tufts of feathers that look like ears, but actually
have
no relation to ears. Screech owls' voice isn't really a screech,
but often sounds more like trilled notes. (Barnies have a rasping
call, sometimes like a modulated hiss.)
Screech owls prefer to nest in wooded places, such as the woods
across
Lakehills from Waterford. Cavities in trees or bird boxes are
ideal
nest sites, which they use as-is (without lining). These fearless
little owls will attack much larger animals -- even people -- that
approach
their nest too closely.
up to 25 inches tall and 55 inches in wingspread. They're also
heavyweight
champions, the heaviest owl in North America. Their "horns" are
extremely
large "ear" tufts, something like a screech owl's ears but
larger.
In coloring, they are mottled brown on top with a white throat and
breast.
Often great horned owls can be heard sounding off with a sequence
of double hoots. They are fierce and very territorial, matched
only
by golden eagles in this regard. These "tigers of the sky" hunt
anything
they can carry; since they're large birds, this includes animals up to
the size of skunks, possums, and bobcats. They are the night-time
equivalent of red-tailed hawks, and in fact great horned owls and
red-tails
sometimes pick fights with each other when there periods of activity
overlap
around twilight.
