Eastern Screech Owl

photo by susan coe - eastern screech owl fledglings, have permission to useThe Eastern screech owl is found “wherever there are trees,” from woods to parks to your backyard.

Eastern screech owl pairs usually nest together for life. However, occasionally a male will mate with two females. The second female will usually evict the first and raise both sets of eggs as her own. With that being said, there have been instances of two females and a male all nesting together.

Owlets fledge after about 30 days, but, as they are developing their flying and hunting techniques, they continue to rely on their parents for food for the next 8-10 weeks.

Very well camouflaged to look like tree bark by their gray or reddish-brown feathers, screech owls are much easier to spot by sound than by sight. They make a distinctive “trilling or whinnying” sound. Hear it for yourself on the recording below from the Macaulay Library, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology!


Screech owls eat many different insects, small mammals, and songbirds. Starlings, Blue Jays, and Chickadees sometimes purposely annoy the nearby screech owls to displace them. They often succeed, thereby alerting all the other birds in the area to the presence of the owls.

Guest author Libby Koger is a Drumlin Farm volunteer. Information from: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Screech-Owl/id