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Discover Nature: Great Horned Owls Incubate Eggs

A great horned owl with brown and white feathers and yellow eyes sits in a tree cavity with a young owl chick.
A great horned owl perches in a tree cavity with a young chick sitting nearby. Great horned owls are in nests, incubating eggs this week in Missouri.

This week on Discover Nature, listen for great horned owls hooting in the night.

These large owls have wide-set ear tufts, mottled brown feathers, and yellow eyes. 

They mate from January through early February, and this week in Missouri, they are incubating eggs in their nests. 

An average clutch consists of just two eggs, with incubation lasting about a month before chicks hatch. 

Found in a wide variety of habitats across the state, from deep woods to urban areas, great horned owls have almost no sense of smell, and are among the few animals that will eat skunks. 

They also help control populations of mice, insects, crows, snakes, and rabbits, and have even been known to take prey as large as barred owls, and wild turkeys. 

Their steady removal of sick individuals of prey species lowers the chances for disease transmission among those populations. But these predatory birds can also be killed when they eat rodents who have consumed rat and mice poison. 

Learn more about great horned owls with the Missouri Department of Conservation’s online field guide

Discover Nature is sponsored by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Kyle Felling was born in the rugged northwest Missouri hamlet of St. Joseph (where the Pony Express began and Jesse James ended). Inspired from a young age by the spirit of the early settlers who used St. Joseph as an embarkation point in their journey westward, Kyle developed the heart of an explorer and yearned to leave for adventures of his own. Perhaps as a result of attending John Glenn elementary school, young Kyle dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but was disheartened when someone told him that astronauts had to be good at math. He also considered being a tow truck driver, and like the heroes of his favorite childhood television shows (The A-Team and The Incredible Hulk) he saw himself traveling the country, helping people in trouble and getting into wacky adventures. He still harbors that dream.
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