The Spotted Owl

I am what is known as the Spotted owl or Canyon owl, or Brown-eyed owl, or Wood owl and the hoot owl.
Wow, you humans really do like to give us a lot of different names don't you? Oh well, that's allright with me, just makes us sound even more interesting then we already are.

This is the male speaking here, my female is off flying around somewhere doing something or other. Anyhow we are what's known as a nocturnal woodland owl which means for those of you who aren't sure, we prefer the evening hours and usually sleep during the day.

We are dark in color and we have round heads and dark brown eyes. Our plumage is heavily spotted with white on our breast and bellies with a few spots on our wings, back and head. Our faces are pale brown with dark brown trim.

We are one of the more laid back owls and are not as afraid of you humans as our other relatives. We have been known to let you come pretty close so don't make us change our minds and do anything to scare us please. We are not that crazy about flying and stick close to the ground if we can.

Like I said before we are the nocturnal type so it stands to reason that's when we hunt for our food. We prefer flying squirrels, rats, gophers, and hares. We have also been known to visit campgrounds and look for food scraps so don't be surprised if you see us lurking around your tents :)

As far as breeding is concerned we prefer the months between March & September and as I get quite comfortable I also prefer to stay with one partner if that's at all possible. The mother of my babies likes to make her nest on broken tops of trees, in tree cavities and on clumps of (how romantic) mistletoe. After about 30 days our family has arrived and in no time at all usually around 2 months they are ready to be on their own.
Unfortunately for us in the wild we have a very high mortality rate. What this boils down to is that other owls like the Great Horned owl and the Barred owl like to compete for our habitat and will not hesitate to kill our young and us too to take over. You might have heard something about our species being endangered, well this is very true so please don't do anything that would add to our demise. I believe there is more information about our endangerment somewhere on this site so if your interested you can read more about it there.

We prefer to live in forests that have nice fir trees or oak or sycamore. We Like North America and prefer the western part of the country like California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and Texas. We also like Mexico and British Columbia.
Well I see my partner has decided to come home so I will see you around sometime, maybe if you're lucky.