Nature Notes
Barred Owls Can Be Spotted and Heard on Mackinac Island
By Patricia Martin

Whenever you head outside on Mackinac, you never know what you might hear, see, or smell. Those of us who are fortunate to live here can experience nature by just stepping out our front door, whether it be the birds that begin singing at about 6 a.m., the musky, skunk-like scent that tells us a red fox has just passed, or the beautiful magenta color of the Fireweed that bursts before the eye, nature is all around us. We just have to be open to it.

I was reminded of that the other day when I was horseback riding with a friend. We were approaching Sugar Loaf from Juniper Trail when a Barred owl flew out from Fern Way. This was the third time in a week that I had heard of or seen a Barred, so I decided that I was supposed to write about them.

Barred owls are good-sized owls, weighing in at about 1.4 pounds with a total length of 17 to 24 inches. I think they're most impressive in flight, with a wing span of 50 to 60 inches. They're smaller in length and weight than the Great Gray Owl, but they have a similar wing span. Their overall appearance is rather stout, and they're easily identified by their heavily streaked, spotted, and variegated mixture of brown, buff, and white.

Barred Owl

Barred owls have a large, round head with dark eyes. They have a horizontal barring pattern on the upper breast and heavily-streaked paler underparts. The upper parts are brown with heavy white spotting and the tail is long with horizontal bars. The song of the Barred is usually eight or more drawn-out notes, which when put to words, sound a bit like "Who cooks for you; who cooks for you all?" The call of the Barred owl is a drawn-out descending "HoooAwlll." One can often hear the caterwauling of several Barreds during the day, and they often respond to imitation of their call. They're quiet, with light, slow, flapping flight, and they often glide. Barred owls are the most commonly seen owl on Mackinac Island.

In the same area (near Sugar Loaf, between Crooked Tree Road and Juniper Trail) where I saw the adult Barred owl, several juvenile owls have been spotted. A couple of days ago, I got a secondhand report about a juvenile and an adult Barred. Apparently the adult had treed a squirrel and was keeping it in the tree so that the young one could catch it. It seems that the adult was trying to teach the young owl to hunt.

Barred owls feed on a wide variety of animals, including small mammals such as squirrels and other rodents, rabbits, birds, frogs, salamanders, lizards, snakes, fish, large insects, crabs, and crayfish. They like to hover and pounce on their prey, and often are found hunting diurnally. Their hunting perch is often near their nest, and they're difficult to disturb if they're nesting during the daytime.

Once owls catch their prey, be it a mouse, squirrel, or whatever, they do what our parents always taught us not to do, swallow their food whole, fur, bones, claws, and all. They later regurgitate the indigestible portions in the form of a hard, felted, or feathered pellet, one pellet per organism, generally. In the case where owls have eaten insects, the pellet is made up of the exoskeletons of several or numerous bugs.

Pellets are quite fascinating to study, and they give ornithologists a great deal of information about the eating habits of owls in a particular area. In school, I remember one of my favorite labs was one in which we soaked the pellets in warm water to loosen them up, and carefully dissected them. We examined the contents, looking particularly at the jaw bones to determine what the owl had for dinner.

Barred owls are monogamous and are thought to mate for life. They build their nests in a tree hollow and usually lay two to three eggs. The male feeds the female during incubation. When the young are hatched, they're considered semialtricial, which means they're covered with down, incapable of departing from the nest, and are fed by the parents. In the case of the Barred owls, the young are hatched with their eyes closed, as well.

Barred owls keep their young with them for quite a long time, more than four months, although they have enough feathers to be able to fly in about 42 days after hatching. It is believed that the longer the parents look after the young, the better the chances for the survival of the young birds to adulthood. This means, of course, that the parents will not hatch a second brood in a season, but the trade-off is that most of the young birds survive.

The sighting of the young owl being taught to hunt is just an example of the kind of care that owl parents take.

Whenever I see one of these big birds, I am reminded of the this little verse that I learned as a child: "The wise old owl lived in an oak. The more he saw the less he spoke. The less he spoke the more he heard. Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?"

When you go outside, be it on Mackinac or wherever you are, keep your eyes and ears open, and be aware of and appreciate the natural world around us all.

Trish Martin is a yeararound resident of Mackinac Island, has earned a master's degree in botany from Central Michigan University, and owns Bogan Lane Inn.