Hi, my name is Ron Kikel. I work for the U.S Forest Service on the Mt. Hood National Forest
here in the state of Oregon and today we're going to talk about one of the most fierce predators
in the forest. And before we get started, I want to introduce a friend of mine who's going to help
me with this talk. His name's Jack and he's a great horned owl. He's what's called an education
bird. He lives at the Rowena Wildlife Clinic near Moser, Oregon. Unfortunately he's had a bad
experience with humans. He was hit by a car, so he's blind in one eye. He can no longer go out
into the wild and survive so Jack has been taken care of by Dr. Jean Cypher. She runs the clinic.
He's a great horned owl. He's about 14 years old and I'm going to go through all the different
attributes that makes this animal such a great alpha predator. Okay as we look at Jack here,
we can see some really outstanding features. One of the most prominent are these. Those are called
tufts and they're actually just feathers. The Latin name is plumicorn: plumo meaning feather
and corno meaning horn. And actually what they're used for is some scientists believe
they're used for breaking up his pattern. And we call that camouflage along with all his other
dark feathers. He can hide very well in a tree or any other environment that he's adapted to
as we look at his face. You can see he's got these what's called facial discs. Okay
and those help him hear. And he can modify those and it's like holding your hands to your ears
and it amplifies the sound. So jack has exceptional hearing. If there is a mouse
running through about a foot of snow jack would be able to hear through that and grab his prey.
Okay the other wonderful thing about his face is you notice his eyes.
His eyes are huge! As a matter of fact they're about the size of a human being's
but being as if they're so large they're fixed into place so we can't move them. If we had eyes
in comparison they would be about this big okay but I wouldn't be able to move them side to side
so to compensate Jack is able to turn his head a
good 270 degrees and that's very good. We can't do that but Jack, he has 14 vertebrae in his neck as
opposed to our 7 so that helps him compensate for not being able to move his eyes back and forth.
His eyes also work great at night and he can also hunt during the day. He has three eyelids:
one upper, one lower, and one called the nictitating membrane which sweeps across
his eye to help keep it clean and protect it from debris. Alright so as we move down,
you can see he's got a really sharp bill, he's got these he's covered from head to toe with feathers
and they're really really soft and this helps him do one of the greatest things owls do:
fly silently. Okay and the reason they can do that is they have these big broad wings
and they have special combs along the edges and if you listen carefully
you can hear the difference. This is off of a redtailed hawk.
Now this is the great horned owl. There's a big difference and when they swoop down they don't
do a lot of flapping so it really works well. This is called a sit and wait predator so he
would be up in his perch and he'd dive quietly down at his prey. Now as we move down his body
we can see what's called talons. Okay these talons can be rotated called zygodactyl so he can bring
swivel one around to where he has two up front two in the back and a large owl can have like
an eight inch circular spread of his claws. So the middle claw has a super sharp edge
which along with the upper mandible of his beak he can rip and tear.
And the other unique thing about his talons is pressure. I have what's called a dynamometer
and this will tell you how much pressure
a human can put out. I pull really hard and get 99 pounds, but that's just really really trying hard.
Jack on the other hand his talon pressure anywhere from two to five hundred pounds. The equivalent of
a German shepherd dog bite so when he clamps down it's it's really really serious pressure. Okay
and it takes about 30 pounds to pull that claw off. They're the strongest with the exception of
the golden eagle which can put out 700 pounds of talon pressure. So we discussed Jack's attributes:
his extremely good eyesight, his extraordinary hearing, his ability to grab and tear things up
as well as his excellent camouflage in his silent flight. Now you can see Jack's kind of
puffing in and out? Well he's trying to keep cool. It's a little warm in here so when they're warm or
nervous they have to expel their body heat and we call that the gular flutter. Okay so
Jack's basically cooling off. Now great horned owls this bird has a very wide range of existence
all the way from the sub-arctic down to South and Central America which leads us to what they eat.
Okay so Jack since they can be found in all those areas the diet's going to be diverse.
They've recorded over 250 different species of animals that owls will eat.
Jack and even larger birds than him larger great horned owls can eat things like
their specialties are mice, voles, rats, small rodents, rabbits but they can also eat and
take down porcupines, great blue herons, canada geese. They'll walk into water to grab
crayfish. They'll eat snakes, lizards, and on and on even been known to take out armadillos. They
also like skunks. Okay you're saying "wow skunks?" that's one thing Jack doesn't have is a sense of
smell or a very good one at that so he can take down skunks. They have a very very diverse diet
but they like to swallow their food whole if they can. If they can't, like I said they're going to
tear it into pieces and they could actually store their food. And in the wintertime,
if their food stores are frozen they'll actually sit on it to incubate it.
Okay not a good idea for you as a youngster to go home and try to sit on any frozen food that's in
the fridge. Parents won't appreciate that very much. If they swallow mice and rats they can't
really digest the bones the fur or feathers of birds that they eat so what they'll do after
about 10 hours is cough up a pellet which is about two inches in length and scientists like
to go through those and pick out the bones and see what the owl has actually been eating to see if
it's got a varied diet or just one of certain animals. Jack here he's about 14 years old.
In the wild owls generally live 10 to 12 years but in captivity they've been known to live up to 28
years which is a long time but in captivity they don't have to compete with anything for food and
they're well taken care of. Jack has his own own flight area to go to so he does rather well and
he'll probably be around for a long time. Jack is a male great horned owl.
If a female was sitting next to him she would be about this tall. They can have a wingspan up to
five feet along with the large wing wide wingspan they can also carry their own weight in food.
So if you have a two pound owl they can actually carry off something that's about two pounds in
weight. It's called wing loading and they've got the highest wing loading of any raptor
in the United States. Owls' breeding season is going to be January and February
and the pair will lay 2 to 4 eggs about this size with 2 to 3 being the norm 6 being a lot.
It depends on food supply basically. They're going nest but they do not build their own nest.
They move into other nests like of hawks and things like that
so they're not great nest builders. The female is the one that's going to
sit on the eggs. Both male and female provide food for their young.
The eggs will hatch after about six weeks. Young will start to fly 9 to 10 weeks after birth
so and then they will span out on their own to find territories. Okay great horn owls in the wild
are essential predators. They help keep other animals in check so that makes them
very important to keep the balance. In the wild the male and female defend their nest really
really well so if you come across a nesting pair please stay the distance from them.
Try not to disturb them. So we've talked about all of Jack's attributes and what makes him such
a remarkable predator. So when you're out in the woods enjoying the public lands,
please keep in mind it's a home for all these wonderful creatures like Jack and many others.
On behalf of the Rowena Wildlife Clinic and the U.S Forest Service,
we'd like you to tread lightly and leave no trace and thank you for watching.