Expert: Julia Booth - 6/2/2008

Question
I have been hearing an owl in my backyard for sometime now and want to know if its a Barred Owl or a Great horned owl? I have heard a barred owl who cooks for yaaall but, can they make differant sounds?

Answer
The Great-Horned Owl will always be a series of "whoos" -usually 5-6 and then the last few are sped up. They don't tend to deviate from this.

The Barred Owl only lives in the eastern half the US, plus parts of the pacific northwest and in most of Canada. Can I assume you live within that range?

The Barred Owl's notes tend to be drawn out more, wheras the Horned Owl's are in quick staccato. The Barred Owl will also make a variety of other sounds -similar to yowling like a cat and can sometimes be heard during the day. The Horned Owl will be heard pretty much exclusively between 9-11pm.

Both will respond to imitations of their call.

A good website to check would be ENature.com because they have sound files for each species. You can compare from those and see which sounds more like what you've been hearing.