Field Guide : Western Screech-Owl
Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.
The western screech-owl is a strictly nocturnal predator – thus, the color column’s dark background. 🌑
Like its close relative, the eastern screech-owl, the western screech-owl is a small, but ferocious hunter, earning it nicknames like “feathered wildcat” and “cat owl.” Both nicknames speak to the screech-owl’s predatory behavior and its appearance. It has an intense, cat-like face – large eyes with pale yellow irises framed by plumage that’s streaked in blacks, grey, and sometimes browns – and ear tufts that, when erect, add to the feline effect.
Despite the name, those “ear tufts” aren’t associated with the owl’s ears. Some ornithologists prefer the term plumicorns, a word derived from the Latin pluma, meaning “soft feather,” and corn, Latin for “horn.” “Soft feather horns” works for me. The plumicorns help break up the screech-owl’s silhouette when it is resting/hiding during daylight, but they are also used for communication. As a quick aside, screech-owl ears – the actual ears, that is – are not asymmetrical. Schoolchildren – including my own – are sometimes taught that all owl species have asymmetrically placed ears, a physiology that evolved because it provides a hunting advantage for a nocturnal predator, but this ear asymmetry occurs in only some owl species, and not in the western screech-owl, which has more or less symmetrically placed ears like our own.
These small opportunistic predators have the most varied diet of any North American owl. Their primary prey are rodents, but they will also take large insects, other small mammals (including some, like rabbits, that are larger than the owl itself), small birds, amphibians, reptiles, worms, fish, crayfish, and more! The western screech-owl is associated with oak woodlands, and the feisty owls often appear on the trail cameras I monitor on the 20-acre, oak woodland-dominated property I steward here in Sonoma County; the cameras typically capture the owls on the ground just after they’ve just fallen on some unsuspecting rodent.
The western screech-owl has two color morphs, red and gray. The red phase – or cinnamon and rust, as I think of it – is rare outside of coastal British Columbia and Alaska. The gray phase, depicted here, is dominant throughout the rest of the species’ range, which extends across riparian and deciduous oak woodland communities from Alaska and Canada, in the north, to central Mexico, in the south.
Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).
Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.
Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.
The western screech-owl is a strictly nocturnal predator – thus, the color column’s dark background. 🌑
Like its close relative, the eastern screech-owl, the western screech-owl is a small, but ferocious hunter, earning it nicknames like “feathered wildcat” and “cat owl.” Both nicknames speak to the screech-owl’s predatory behavior and its appearance. It has an intense, cat-like face – large eyes with pale yellow irises framed by plumage that’s streaked in blacks, grey, and sometimes browns – and ear tufts that, when erect, add to the feline effect.
Despite the name, those “ear tufts” aren’t associated with the owl’s ears. Some ornithologists prefer the term plumicorns, a word derived from the Latin pluma, meaning “soft feather,” and corn, Latin for “horn.” “Soft feather horns” works for me. The plumicorns help break up the screech-owl’s silhouette when it is resting/hiding during daylight, but they are also used for communication. As a quick aside, screech-owl ears – the actual ears, that is – are not asymmetrical. Schoolchildren – including my own – are sometimes taught that all owl species have asymmetrically placed ears, a physiology that evolved because it provides a hunting advantage for a nocturnal predator, but this ear asymmetry occurs in only some owl species, and not in the western screech-owl, which has more or less symmetrically placed ears like our own.
These small opportunistic predators have the most varied diet of any North American owl. Their primary prey are rodents, but they will also take large insects, other small mammals (including some, like rabbits, that are larger than the owl itself), small birds, amphibians, reptiles, worms, fish, crayfish, and more! The western screech-owl is associated with oak woodlands, and the feisty owls often appear on the trail cameras I monitor on the 20-acre, oak woodland-dominated property I steward here in Sonoma County; the cameras typically capture the owls on the ground just after they’ve just fallen on some unsuspecting rodent.
The western screech-owl has two color morphs, red and gray. The red phase – or cinnamon and rust, as I think of it – is rare outside of coastal British Columbia and Alaska. The gray phase, depicted here, is dominant throughout the rest of the species’ range, which extends across riparian and deciduous oak woodland communities from Alaska and Canada, in the north, to central Mexico, in the south.
Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).
Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.
Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.
The western screech-owl is a strictly nocturnal predator – thus, the color column’s dark background. 🌑
Like its close relative, the eastern screech-owl, the western screech-owl is a small, but ferocious hunter, earning it nicknames like “feathered wildcat” and “cat owl.” Both nicknames speak to the screech-owl’s predatory behavior and its appearance. It has an intense, cat-like face – large eyes with pale yellow irises framed by plumage that’s streaked in blacks, grey, and sometimes browns – and ear tufts that, when erect, add to the feline effect.
Despite the name, those “ear tufts” aren’t associated with the owl’s ears. Some ornithologists prefer the term plumicorns, a word derived from the Latin pluma, meaning “soft feather,” and corn, Latin for “horn.” “Soft feather horns” works for me. The plumicorns help break up the screech-owl’s silhouette when it is resting/hiding during daylight, but they are also used for communication. As a quick aside, screech-owl ears – the actual ears, that is – are not asymmetrical. Schoolchildren – including my own – are sometimes taught that all owl species have asymmetrically placed ears, a physiology that evolved because it provides a hunting advantage for a nocturnal predator, but this ear asymmetry occurs in only some owl species, and not in the western screech-owl, which has more or less symmetrically placed ears like our own.
These small opportunistic predators have the most varied diet of any North American owl. Their primary prey are rodents, but they will also take large insects, other small mammals (including some, like rabbits, that are larger than the owl itself), small birds, amphibians, reptiles, worms, fish, crayfish, and more! The western screech-owl is associated with oak woodlands, and the feisty owls often appear on the trail cameras I monitor on the 20-acre, oak woodland-dominated property I steward here in Sonoma County; the cameras typically capture the owls on the ground just after they’ve just fallen on some unsuspecting rodent.
The western screech-owl has two color morphs, red and gray. The red phase – or cinnamon and rust, as I think of it – is rare outside of coastal British Columbia and Alaska. The gray phase, depicted here, is dominant throughout the rest of the species’ range, which extends across riparian and deciduous oak woodland communities from Alaska and Canada, in the north, to central Mexico, in the south.
Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).
Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.