And the winner is...
January 19, 2025



Hurray! I just got back from the North American Owl Awards, where I took home the Golden Owl Pellet for Largest Wingspan in a North American Owl. Did you know that my species' wingspan can be as great as 60.2 inches?! I left my competition in the dust -- or in the snow, as the case may be. Both the Snowy Owl's max wingspan and that of the Great Horned Owl top out at a disappointing 57.1 inches¹. Hey, folks, tape measures don't lie!

Listen to the North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Zimman Field at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts!


1: Great Gray Owl Identification, Cornell Lab: All About Birds

You Are Getting Sleepy!
December 9, 2024



You are getting sleepy!

Oh, hi there, friends. I was just trying to hypnotize some prey: a meadow vole, to be precise. Do you know, we Great Gray Owls missed our calling. We have all the appearances of the perfect hypnotist: big piercing yellow eyes inside of an enormous pale facial disk containing concentric gray and brown circles¹, like a picture torn out of a book of optical illusions. Add in the big white X between our eyes and the white bowtie beneath our yellow-orange beak², and we look like the perfect practitioner of the mesmeric arts. And this air of authority is only enhanced by the fact that we are the tallest owl in North America³.

It's a wonder that owl lovers don't fall asleep just looking at us.

But we do seem to manage to impress. The Manitoba legislature found us so beguiling that they made us their provincial bird in 1987. We are apparently more prevalent in that province than in any other part of Canada. I'm told you can find us in places like Riding Mountain National Park, Hecla/Grindstone Provincial Park, and the Sandilands Provincial Forest⁴.

But with all due respect, please keep your distance. We will not necessarily run away in the presence of strangers, but that does not mean that we are delighted with your propinquity. In fact, you could be stressing us out. That's bad, because it saps us of the energy we need for the purposes of daily survival. You may even be approaching a nest site for all you know. In that case, a female Great Gray Owl might appear to "freeze up" and stare at you from a nearby tree branch, but make no mistake: that is not a welcoming gaze, my friend. To the contrary, she is ticked by your presence and may even be getting ready to attack you⁵! Hear me now and believe me later!

Hah! I just thought of something funny. They call us the "provincial bird" of Manitoba, right, but we Great Gray Owls are anything but provincial, geographically speaking.

Our species range extends across Canada from Quebec City to Fairbanks, Alaska, and south into the Pacific Northwest, all the way down to Yosemite⁶, where researchers say we have been living as an isolated community for 25,000 years⁷! That said, we are not exactly mobile as individuals. In the words of the Animal Corner website, we are "predominantly sedentary⁸," with the exception that our northerly populations go south every four years or so in response to a cyclical downturn in local rodent populations. Such southerly forays are referred to as "irruptions" by those in the know and provide excellent opportunities for Statesiders to add Strix nebulosa to their lifetime bird list⁹.

I know what you're thinking, by the way. You're thinking:

"Thanks for this great intro to your species and I look forward to your future blog posts which will surely give me more fun specifics about Strix nebulosa. But what can I do to help the Great Gray Owl, given that it is currently listed as a 'sensitive' species in Oregon¹⁰ and an 'endangered' species in California¹¹?"

Great question, folks! Wow! I'm impressed!

How do you help the Great Gray Owl?

For starters, cut down on unnecessary logging operations¹²! Fair enough? We raise our young in the abandoned nests of large birds, like goshawks and ravens, at the top of tall trees. And if there are no tall trees around, there are obviously no nests for my species to commandeer.

In the words of the National Park Service:

"Timber harvest is a threat when it removes the large live and dead trees required for nesting and the dense cover required for protecting new fledglings.¹³"

And if you could do something about global warming while you're at it, that would be so much gravy. In the words of Jennifer Bogo of the National Audubon Society:

"The Great Gray Owl could lose 97 percent of its current summer breeding range if the global temperature increases by 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.¹⁴"

So in a word, cool it, folks!

Get it? Cool it? Hah!

Ahem.

And stay tuned to this blog for more exciting facts about Strix nebulosa, the Great Gray Owl, aka "the Phantom of the North¹⁵"!

And now, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to have another go at this meadow vole that I've been holding here in my talons all this time. I keep telling the thing that it is getting sleepy, but it never seems to "take." I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

You are getting sleepy, do you hear? SLEEEEEEPY!


1: Strix nebulosa (Great Gray Owl), Digital Atlas of Idaho
2: Great Grey Owl, Animal Corner
3: Great Gray Owl, Nature Manitoba
4: The Great Gray Owl, Nature North
5: The Great Gray Owl, Nature North
6: Great Gray Owl Range Map, Cornell Lab: All About Birds
7: Great Grey Owl, Wikipedia
8: Great Grey Owl, Animal Corner
9: The Great Gray Owl Irruption, Audubon
10: Great Gray Owl Wildlife Profile, Oregon Wild
11: Great Gray Owl, National Park Service
12: Great Gray Owl, Alaska Handbook
13: Great Gray Owl, National Park Service
14: Explore Our Climate Change Cover, Audubon
15: Phantom of the North: the Elusive Great Gray Owl, Okanogan Highlands Alliance