Barred Owl

About the Barred Owl

The Barred Owl is the big, dark-eyed owl of southern woodlands - bulky and round-headed with no ear tufts, brown-and-white barring across the chest, and streaking below. The soulful brown eyes (most large owls have yellow) give it one of the gentlest faces in the owl family, though the local squirrels would disagree.

Its voice is the classic sound of bottomland woods: the rhythmic "who cooks for you, who cooks for YOU-all," often in duets that dissolve into wild caterwauling. Barred Owls hunt from a perch at night - and often on cloudy days - dropping on mice, frogs, and crawfish, and they nest in big tree cavities in mature timber.

In Texas the Barred Owl is a year-round resident of the eastern two-thirds of the state, following wooded creek corridors deep into towns and city greenbelts. Any patch of big old trees near water can hold a pair, and a daytime encounter - a broad-shouldered shape staring down from a shaded limb - is always a gift.