A Barred Owl (Image: Brendan McGarry)

If I walked up to a random stranger on the street and said, “Hey, there’s a crow!” I suspect I would either be ignored or looked at with suspicion.

If instead I replaced “crow” with “owl,” I can almost guarantee that I would receive an entirely different reaction. Whether this is because of Harry Potter or because owls look a touch more relatable than other birds (with big heads, large forward facing eyes they might remind us of ourselves), we know and generally like owls. Owls are beautiful, mysterious, and interesting.

Yet, most owls are not very conspicuous and a vast majority of them are nocturnal. A lot of people have never or only rarely seen one in real life. On an average day on the Hill, you are not likely to see an owl. But what if you wanted to?

The first step to finding any species is to know a few things about them. And, thanks to the simplifying effects of urbanization we only really have one species to focus on: the Barred Owl, Strix varia. The interesting thing is that Barred Owls weren’t in Seattle until 1982, when they were reported nesting at Discovery Park after only reaching Washington around 1973.

Barred Owls are not native to our area, which generally speaking isn’t that remarkable when it comes to species we interact with on the Hill. However, the story of Barred Owls, their arrival and impacts is fascinating, inhabiting the intersection of conservation, novel ecosystems, environmental ethics, and natural history. I’ve written about them elsewhere on Pikes/Pines, so I’ll keep it brief and basic. Barred Owls essentially spread across the continent from the east in the wake of land change, primarily logging, which gave them ideal habitat. They are good at dispersing, are big enough to take a wide range of prey, and can take advantage of the patchy, varied habitat that comes in the wake of resource extraction and (settler) human development.

This expansion has generally been good for Barred Owl, whose populations have increased by 1% annually since 1966, it’s been bad for a variety of species including other owls (some of whom they eat). Particularly prone have been their close cousins, the endangered Northern Spotted Owls, Strix occidentalis caurina. When their close relatives showed up to bully them, take their territories, and interbreed, Northern Spotted Owls were already on the precipice due to habitat loss, the poster organism for the showdown between logging and conservation in our region. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has conducted a study to see if active removal of Barred Owls could help Spotted Owl populations and intends to draft an environmental impact statement for active management of Barred Owls. (We’ve also seen a precipitous decline in Western Screech Owls correlated to Barred Owl arrival; although screech owls are not an endangered, they did breed in Seattle not too long ago.)

The author, several years ago, releasing a Barred Owl that got stuck in a pigeon coop (and killed all the pigeon within). (Image: Brendan McGarry)

All this is important, if a bit controversial, context for why Barred Owls are common here. But it doesn’t really help you see an owl. And, there probably wouldn’t be any other resident owls on the Hill if Barred Owls weren’t around anyway. So onwards without any anguish.

The good news is that it’s a great time of year to see Barred Owls around Seattle and on Capitol Hill. Most owls begin breeding fairly early in the year because they need to get their offspring out the door and on their own and that takes time. A full two months to get a baby Barred Owl from egg to fledgling, and even then they are still helpless little screechers for several more months. By fall they are forced off by weary parents, only then able to catch their own food with any consistency. Barred Owls are currently preparing to begin breeding, which means they are busy vocalizing to remind everyone where their territory bounds are.

Despite being flexible in their habitat needs, Barred Owls do require trees of significant size to nest in. Preferably this is a tree with a big hollow, or a decaying snag. This further narrows your search, because there aren’t that many options in our sea of buildings. Interlaken is the only place fully “on” the Hill that supports breeding Barred Owls. The Arboretum also supports a breeding pair.

Baby Barred Owls are very vocal and far from shy. Give them their space and they’ll let you watch them for hours. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Here’s a good word to use when thinking about finding Barred Owls: crepuscular. Barred Owls are certainly active at night, but you are just as likely to hear them hollering away during the twilight hours as you are at midnight. There’s no need to walk around in the dark with a spotlight, worrying someone will call the cops on you. I’ve seen far more Barred Owls in the middle of the day than I have in the middle of the night, (but that might be a function of being diurnal myself than anything else).

Certainly learning what Barred Owls sound like is a useful tool too. They are far from quiet and easy to track down or even lure in by mimicking their call (though I don’t recommend the latter tactic because it is 1) rude to a bird trying to protect their territory, and 2) they have talons). But what might be just as easy is to pay attention to bird language. Groups of crows or other songbirds will mob around any number of predators to decrease their ability to surprise their prey, but knowing what it sounds like when birds are pissed off is a good way to clue into a nearby predator, that could be an owl. (Here’s what a group of angry robins looks and sounds like and they are often the birds that tell me there’s an owl around.)

I can’t guarantee that if you go out tomorrow to Interlaken or the Arboretum, knowing what to look for, and pay close attention that you’ll see a Barred Owl. But it’s certainly a better bet than waiting for an errant Snowy Owl to touch down on the Hill, though that does happen from time to time too. Barred Owls might not be from here, and may even have squeezed out other species in certain places, but they are your neighborhood owl and are still immensely cool animals.

An adult Barred Owl blending in with their surroundings during the day (Image: Brendan McGarry)

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍