The Eastern Screech Owl Chronicles

I hung an owl box. 10 years later on a sunny February morning an owl finally came to roost. This is that owl's story ...

... as told in his own words.

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Hello.

Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is OHMYGOD but everyone calls me Snacks. I'm an Eastern Screech Owl.

Karen and I came together a few mornings ago. I was resting and sunning myself a bit as one does in the comfort of their own hole in a box. I could easily see her (I'm an owl after all) inside the kitchen window watching the dog, who was outside doing his business under my tree.

Apologies for being indelicate.

As she crouched down to get a better look at the dog, Karen suddenly tilted her head back and looked straight up at me. Incidentally, that was the moment she named me OHMYGOD. I heard it with my own invisible ears.

That is really all I can tell you about Karen.

So let me tell you all about me.

Snacks - The Eastern Screech Owl

Habitat

I am cosmopolitan but not a worldly owl. I'm comfortable in forests or some of the nicer suburban backyards across North and Central America. But that's as far as I go. I fly a lot, I'm just not a globetrotter.

My preferred spaces are holes. I like them in trees or in boxes on trees.

If your interest is piqued, this is How, Where & When (NOW!) to Hang an Owl Box.

Nesting

Ah, springtime – a season of love, renewal, and baby owlets. At the moment, I'm scouting out tree cavities and owl boxes for nesting areas for my lady-friend. In just a few weeks when the trees begin to bud and the flowers bloom I'll start to think about settling down and raising this year's family.

Fun Fact: Eastern Screech-Owl pairs are usually monogamous and stay together for life. Some males, will on occasion, mate with two different females but this is mainly in Utah. And usually ends with a television series contract with TLC.

I am one part of a lifelong power couple. While one parent takes the day shift, the other pulls an all-nighter, ensuring that our fluffy gray bundles of joy are well taken care of and don't eat each other.

Behaviour

I'm am indeed, a night owl. I do fly around at night looking for dinner, but most of the time I just hitch a claw to a tree and wait it out. When I see something directly below me, I swoop and scoop.

Food

Now, let's talk about dinner. I am small and mostly polite but - I'm a killer. I am a stealth, feathered Ninja with a taste for the finer things in life. Mice, voles, insects, rats, small mammals, worms are all on the menu.

And then I barf (regurgitate if we're being formal) it up.

Eating

• In the first part of my belly there's a "liquefy zone". It does what you think. Turns that mouse (or anything else I eat) into mush.
  
• Then it's off to the "grinding chamber" where tough bits get crushed and the good stuff gets pushed along. Whatever can't be digested, like fur and bones, gets compacted into a neat little package called a pellet.
  
• I cough this pellet up and spit it out. Always with dignity.

Fun Fact: Fluffy, wiggle-bum, cutie-pie, nesting screech-owlets will attack and kill their weakest sibling for food. We don't brag about it as a whole, it's just something we have to do to keep the family name going.

But what about my social life, you ask. That's what everyone wants to know, right? I am solitary. A lone wolf. Lenny without the Squiggy. But I take my turf seriously and defend it with the same zeal I may or may not have eaten my brother with.

Thank you for taking the time to learn a little bit about me. ~ Snacks, the Screech Owl

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A note from Karen:

Yes, it's true! About a decade after putting up an owl house I have an owl in my owl box. I have no idea how long he'll stay there (assuming Snacks is a he) but he has sat, roosting in the box, all day for the past 3 days.

As long as he's around I'll be updating about his comings and goings. Because OHMYGOD I have an owl!