Great Gray Owl

The Great Gray Owl is among the tallest owls on Earth, with a large, rounded head bearing no ear tufts and an exceptionally large gray facial disk marked with fine concentric rings, giving it an almost otherworldly expression. Despite its imposing size, much of its bulk is fluffy insulating plumage rather than body mass, and it actually weighs considerably less than the bulkier Great Horned Owl or Snowy Owl.

One of its most remarkable abilities is hunting rodents it cannot see, using extraordinarily acute hearing to pinpoint voles moving beneath deep snow, then plunging feet-first through the snowpack to catch prey it has located purely by sound.

Key Field Marks

• Very large, rounded head with no ear tufts
• Enormous gray facial disk with fine concentric rings and small yellow eyes set close together
• Long tail, giving an elongated overall silhouette
• Grayish, mottled plumage overall with a distinctive black "bow tie" mark below the chin

Similar Species

• Great Horned Owl: has prominent ear tufts and yellow eyes more prominent within a smaller facial disk.
• Barred Owl: smaller with dark brown eyes and a smaller facial disk, lacking the Great Gray's massive head and concentric ring pattern.

Range

Great Gray Owls occur across the boreal forest belt of North America, Europe, and Asia, with a resident population extending south into the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains of the western United States.

Habitat

They favor dense boreal or subalpine coniferous forest for roosting and nesting, adjacent to open meadows, bogs, or clearings where they hunt for rodents in the grass and snow.

Hunting

Great Gray Owls hunt primarily by sound, using their large facial disk to funnel even faint sounds of rodents moving under vegetation or snow to their asymmetrically positioned ears, then diving feet-first, sometimes breaking through snow crust firm enough to support a person's weight, to catch prey they never saw.

Voice

The male's call is a series of very low, deep, resonant hoots, among the lowest-pitched calls of any North American owl, often difficult for human ears to detect at a distance.

Nesting

Great Gray Owls do not build their own nests, typically using the tops of broken-off snags or old stick nests built by hawks or ravens. Clutch size is usually two to five eggs and can vary with rodent abundance.