Food a challenge for hungry owls

HOLDEN – At the Fields Pond Audubon Center, we have been getting reports of barred owls watching bird feeders, and getting hit and killed on the roads.

The reason is hunger.

There are many young barred owls on their own in the middle of winter. They are trying to find territory with many perches, shelters in dense trees such as hemlock, and many mice and voles – their favorite food – to eat. (Voles are small rodents with small eyes and ears and short tails.)

It is not easy to find good territory that is not occupied by another barred owl. It is also not easy to learn how to catch a mouse. Mice are quick.

Additionally, in the middle of winter, the snow is deep. The voles and mice are safe in tunnels under a deep layer of snow and-or under a crust.

That is why a barred owl will sometimes resort to sitting on a perch where it can watch a bird feeder. It will mostly watch the feeder at night, when mice and voles frequent the feeder and eat seeds on the ground.

But if the owl is having a hard time catching mice in the night, it will look for other prey in the day. It may learn that it can catch birds feeding on the ground. This may traumatize the observer, but one can consider this phenomenon as bird feeding at a higher “trophic,” or nutrition, level in the food chain.

Now for road kill.

Owls also find grassy strips alongside a road to be great hunting areas. Any grassy area that gets mowed, but infrequently, has food (seeds) and shelter (tall grass and weeds) for voles. Owls often perch on a branch along the boundary between the forest and the grassy strip and watch for voles. But when the owl crosses the road at the wrong height, and at the wrong moment, it gets hit and killed.

Recently, one observer saw four dead barred owls on Interstate 95 from Kittery to Bangor.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.