Great Horned Owl Up Close and Personal

Have you ever seen a great horned owl up close and personal?

The Great Horned Owl is largely nocturnal so they can be difficult to spot.  Come to Scurlock Farms and I will find one for you to see!  When giving tours guests in the evening we frequently flush one out in the pecan orchard or on the wooded hillside.

We know of three pairs of great horned owls that are nesting on Scurlock Farms in the Texas Hill Country.

David, our youngest son, built his home on the farm and has three daughters.  One sleeps upstairs and many nights she goes downstairs to the sofa as the owls are right outside her window “hooting” at each other!

Another pair of great horned owls nest somewhere below Rocky Overlook and The Palette Pad.  Every evening we will hear them “hoo-hoot” to each other.  Many guests have commented they have loved sitting under the large live oak trees in the evenings as they relax with a glass of wine, listening to the owls.

If we are leaving or arriving back at the farm at dusk, many times we will see a large Great Horned Owl fly out of a huge live oak tree in front of Rocky Overlook.  The owl will normally fly over the fence then glide into the pasture and over the pond, then into the woods at the bottom of the hill.

A Great Horned Owl is majestic in flight and it flies silently with no wing noise. 

They seem to glide around and in between trees.  With their really large wingspan of 3′ to 5′, it seems as if their wings are going to hit the limbs as they fly by.  The ones I see about Scurlock Farms have wings in the 5′ range!

When Daniel, our oldest son, was a teen, he killed a rabbit and was bringing it home through the woods right about dusk.  A large Great Horned Owl flew right at him (probably for the rabbit – the owl thought dinner was being hand delivered!) and scared Daniel nearly to death.

When giving guests tours about Scurlock Farms in the late evening, several times we have flushed out a large Great Horned Owl as we go down into the woods.  Once we watched the direction the owl flew and looked for it as we came back up from the river right at dusk.

I can’t believe one of the guests actually spotted the Great Horned Owl sitting near the top of a tree on our return trip!  I thought we would flush him out again, but he stayed in the tree – watching us watch him.  We got a good photo of him as he sat camouflaged in the tree.

See if you can spot the Great Horned Owl in the photo.

Even though I know where he is, I have to really look to see him. At the end of the blog, I will tell you where he is “hidden” in case you don’t spot him, so you will know he really is there!

The owls nest in tree holes, stumps, caves, or in the abandoned nests of other large birds.

The Great Horned Owl is monogamous and the female will lay one to five eggs, but two are typical.  The female great horned owl is larger than the male.

Watch the video below to see a Great Horned Owl in flight at night – coming right at the camera as a tape played the sounds of a wounded rabbit.  David thought he spotted a coyote far away in the top pasture, then the eyes began floating and came right at him as he lay on roof of a barn, before landing a few feet from him.  David quickly turned off the tape!

Both the male and female will sit on the eggs to incubate them and both will hunt for food.  They are very  powerful birds and will fiercely protect their young.

According to National Geographic, owls have a very varied diet, including raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, birds, falcons (hawks), and other owls. They regularly eat skunks (could have had a feast if they had seen the surfeit of skunks we saw earlier in the week!), and may be the only animal with such an appetite.

I know their eyesight is excellent. Great Horned Owls have no sense of smell, so they can relish eating skunks.  They sometimes hunt for smaller game by standing or walking along the ground, although I have never seen this behavior.

Location of great horned owl in photo:

He is sitting on a branch pointing to the right in the red tree to the left center of the photo.  Luckily he is silhouetted against the sky between two clusters of leaves, about 1/5 of the way from the top of the tree.

I am always thrilled when I see the great horned owl, and I assume you are the same.  Please leave a comment and let us know your experiences with this majestic bird.  Would also love to see any photos you care to share.

A guest visiting from New Mexico was sitting at the fire pit one evening right at dusk when a Great Horned Owl flew onto a telephone pole near his yard.  The guest sat very quietly as he watched the owl and told me that was the highlight of his one-week trip!

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