Are There Owls in Your Backyard?

By CHARLOTTE WOLTER | Contributing Writer

You live in Pacific Palisades, where almost every home is close to a natural area. You hear noises at night, sometimes a “hoot-hoot,” and you wonder: “Was that an owl?”

Well, the answer is yes. However, most of the owls in your backyard are not the kind that go “hoot-hoot.” The hooters are great horned owls, huge 24-inch-high predators that go after everything from raccoons to tiny mice. But there are other owls that you can hear late at night, which is what makes investigating them so interesting.

You probably won’t see them, because most owls are strictly nocturnal. Their noiseless flight is what makes them great hunters of rodents. But you can hear them.

You probably have a barn owl couple in your area. These silent white flyers with their endearing heart-shaped faces are the bird world’s top exterminators of mice and rats. Each 12-inch owl can eat as many as 2,000 rats per year.

As their name suggests, they have lived near people for a long time, taking advantage of barns and other covered places to shelter their nests. They fly only at night, so you might not see them. Instead of a “hoot-hoot,” listen for a long raspy screech.

Alongside your neighborhood barn owls, you might hear a pair of western screech owls, who, interestingly, don’t screech at all. Their call is a series of short hoots that speed up, like the cadence of a bouncing ball. These small grayish owls, just eight inches tall, are also prodigious exterminators of mice and rats, almost on par with barn owls.

Both barn owls and screech owls will take advantage of human efforts to help them nest. They prefer to nest in holes in standing dead trees, but how many of those are there in suburbia?

That’s why some Palisadians have added barn owl or screech owl nesting boxes to their back yards. The fall is the time to put them up. That’s when young owl couples are searching for a place to nest next spring.

One caution: Remember, if your neighbors have put out rat poison, the same substances that kill rats also kill owls (as well as foxes, raccoons, coyotes and mountain lions). Owls are very effective at controlling rats, but not if the rats are killing them. Hopefully you and your neighbors have agreed not to use rat poison in your area. Remove the poisons and let the owls do the work.

Thinking of some evening exploring to find owls? A quiet walk around your neighborhood is a great way to start. All you may see is a flash of white as a barn owl swoops in on a rat, but you might hear its call.

Another place to hear owls would be Will Rogers State Historic Park. The trail, which is a wide fire road, is relatively easy to follow at night.

Whether they scre-e-ech or go hoot-hoot-hoot, your local owls are good birds to get to know.

You can hear the owl calls at All About Birds, the website of Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Each webpage includes the calls for that bird under “Listen.”

For more information, visit allaboutbirds.org/guide/western_screech-owl, allaboutbirds.org/guide/barn_owl or allaboutbirds.org/guide/great_horned_owl.

Wild Birds Unlimited is located at 12433 Wilshire Boulevard, across from Armstrong Garden Center. More information can be found at wbu.com/santamonica.