Screech Owl Study

This small owl, barely longer than a robin, may be found in wilderness or even urban settings if there are proper old trees with holes for nesting. As a teenager I had an early morning paper route and I discovered that a screech owl nested or at least roosted in behind the fancy Victorian fretwork at the gable end of a big, old house on my route. In the pre-dawn light I could sometimes call out a curious little head by doing a tremulous, descending whistle or by squeaking like a mouse. In fact, many of my screech owl sightings through the years have been of a head and shoulders perfectly filling the round opening of a nest box or old woodpecker hole. The splotchy, grey pattern is often such a good camouflage that one at first thinks that the hole has simply disappeared.