Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owl in a Tree

The Great Horned Owl can be up to 25 inches long which is 63 cm.  Their wingspread can be up to 50 inches or 127 cm.  They can exert up to 300 lbs of force with their killer talons.  They feed on other birds, small mammals, and even frogs and scorpions. 

The Great Horned Owl lives throughout many parts of both North America and South America.  They are the largest in Alaska and the smallest in Mexico's Yucatan Penninsula.  I saw one many years ago when I was teaching school in Juneau Alaska.  It was huge and it flew off my roof as I was looking out my kitchen window.  That owl may well have been a female.  Female Great Horned Owls are larger than males.  The males have a deeper voice than the females.  We heard owls in the swampy forest of Congaree National Park. The males and females were talking back and forth because we could hear the deeper and higher hooting.  It was dusk and the owls woke up and made quite an awesome chorus. 

Great Horned Owls have very soft feathers so they can fly nearly soundlessly.  This helps them surprise their prey.   Great Horned Owls can kill a prey bigger than themselves. 

Below are some photos we took at Congaree National Park near Columbia, South Carolina, (where we heard the owl chorus at dusk). We took these last April.  The Owl drawing can be found, in printable form, by clicking on the "Animals" button at the top of the page.  Remember that new drawings are at the bottom of the list so scroll down. 

Congaree National Park April 2019

Congaree National Park winding root

Congaree National Park swampy forest