Barred owl a real hoot around the city
Life with Chloe the barred owl is an absolute hoot. Take it from Angie Llanas, senior animal ambassador at SeaWorld San Antonio. That is, if you can hear her over Chloe’s lively hoots and squawks. “She usually does that every time I start talking about her,” Llanas said. “Chloe obviously is her own unique individual. She’s very acclimated to going everywhere with us, so we can take her out to schools and out to the community.”
For more than a decade, Chloe has wowed schoolchildren and bird
An eastern owl in Central Texas.
The barred owl (Strix varia) covers most of the eastern United States, including East Texas, but also hooks through the heart of the Lone Star State with a range that includes San Antonio and Austin. Barred owls favor just about any densely wooded area, as well as creeks and greenbelts.
Chloe heralds from Christmas, Fla., a small town in Orange County. Llanas noted Chloe was fed by people when she was young and would not have survived in the wild. So Chloe was taken to Discovery Cove Orlando before moving to SeaWorld San Antonio in 2009 to become an animal ambassador.
A unique look bar none. True to their name, barred owls sport mostly mottled brown and white feathers with vertical brown bars down their underside and horizontal brown bars across their upper breast. Their big round heads house a pointy yellow beak and a pair of round, dark brown, almost black, eyes.
Barred owls measure around 18 inches long with a 40-inch wingspan. Barred owls live for around a dozen years in the wild but can live even longer in captivity. Chloe is 18 years old.
They have a quirky hoot. It’s not just Chloe who practically asks for attention. The barred owl’s hoot sounds more like a question than an exclamation.
“It sounds like, ‘Who cooks for you?’ ” said Bexar Audubon Society President Patsy Inglet.
Their heads don’t turn all the way around.
Contrary to popular myth, owls can’t spin their heads in a full circle like a feathered pinwheel. Inglet noted the typical owl can rotate his noggin around 270 degrees in every direction.
“Owls can’t turn their eyes in their sockets,” Inglet said. “That’s why they turn their heads so far around.”
Opportunistic eaters. Mostly nocturnal, the barred owl usually eats rodents and other small mammals, though frogs, fish, lizards, snakes, insects and even other birds make it onto the menu, too.
Stealthy predators. Barred
owls perch high in trees to find their next meal on the ground, relying on their sharp eyesight, exceptional hearing and silent flying to sneak up on and snatch their prey.
Their victims often don’t see them coming, much less hear them swoop in for the kill. Credit that to the barred owl’s velvety feathers that dampen sound and the serrated feathers at the edges of their wings that muffle their flight.
Inglet noted barred owls can’t see colors well, but they still have excellent vision in low light. They can even see in ultraviolet
and can trace the urine trails of little rodents. Barred owls also usually have one ear hole higher than the other, so they can triangulate sound side to side as well as up and down.
They make noise to mate.
The monogamous barred owls mate during winter, which is when they’re most vocal, Inglet said. Called “dueting,” the male and the female often hoot to each other as if in duet.
A small family.
buffs as both a rescued animal at SeaWorld and a shining example of her species, so common in and around the Alamo City, where such owls often are heard much more than they’re seen.
“For Chloe, people just get to see just how beautiful a barred owl is when you see them up close,” Llanas said. “It’s really a privilege to get to show people that. Because people might hear one but never see one.” Here’s a closer look at Chloe and those other barred owls known for making noise around town.
Barred owls typically lay a clutch of only two to three eggs. The male hunts for food while the female stays with
the young, which are called owlets.
You’ll probably see the kids instead of their parents.
Barred owls sleep mostly during the day, but their young have a knack for venturing out in daytime. The owls can fly less than two months after hatching.
“When people usually see owls, it’s when the little ones get too big for the nest,” Inglet said.
Wise but creepy reputation.
Owls long have been associated with smarts, thanks to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, having an owl on her shoulder. But Inglet said owls also have been associated with mystery and death.
“All these associations are because of the night and the calls and what happens in the winter,” said Inglet, who attributes those connections to the barred owl’s general nocturnal activity and mating hoots heard in the dead of winter.
Beware La Lechuza, the giant witch owl.
The Donkey Lady and La Llorona (“the weeping woman”) aren’t the only boogeymen and -women of Mexican American folklore. According to legend and most abuelitas, La Lechuza (the Spanish word for “owl”) is another cultural cucuy said to portend death and bedevil naughty children.
Descriptions of La Lechuza vary. Sometimes she’s just a giant owl, while other tales paint her as a harpylike creature with the body of an owl and the face of a witch. It’s also unclear if La Lechuza is a barred owl, probably because no one sticks around long enough to find out.
Not so popular in pop culture.
Good luck finding a barred owl in famous works of fiction. Great horned owls tend to get the love when it comes to owls in pop culture.
Owl in “Winnie the Pooh,” Friend Owl in “Bambi” and Big Mama in “The Fox and the Hound” are all horned owls. Ditto Woodsy Owl, the mascot for the U.S. Forest Service who first told us to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” in 1971. Meanwhile, Harry Potter’s Hedwig is a snowy owl.
The Big Apple’s famous owl of 2020.
Long live Rocky, the tiny saw-whet owl that made big news last month when she was found in the giant Christmas tree at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center.
A worker spotted Rocky, short for Rockefeller, of course, near the base of the towering Norway spruce, which had traveled with the owl some 170 miles from upstate New York. The hungry but uninjured bird was sent to Ravensbeard Wildlife Center and later released back to the wild.