Habitat: The flammulated owl normally is not found in cutover forests or in pure stands of conifers but requires some understory or intermixture of oaks in the forest (Phillips et al. 1964). It occurs in ponderosa pine, spruce-fir, lodgepole pine, aspen, and pinyon-juniper forest types (Grinnell and Miller 1944, Karalus and Eckert 1974).
Nest: Nests are usually located in abandoned flicker or other woodpecker holes, but flammulated owls may take over occupied nests (Karalus and Eckert 1974). Their nests have been reported in pine, oak, and aspen snags (Bent 1938).
Food: The flammulated owl is almost entirely insectivorous, but it occasionally captures small mammals and birds. In the few stomachs that have been examined, items reported were various beetles, moths, grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, ants, other insects, spiders, and scorpions (Bent 1938). Kenyon (1947) examined the stomach contents of one owl and found 4 crane flies, 1 caddisfly, 7 moths, 11 harvestman spiders, and 1 long-horned grasshopper; the bird had apparently choked to death on the grasshopper.
Hawk owl
Surnia ulula
L 14″ W 33″
Habitat: The hawk owl inhabits much of the northern poplar, spruce, pine, birch, tamarac, and willow forests where such forests are broken by small prairie burns and bogs (Henderson 1919).
Nest: Hawk owls usually nest in natural cavities or in enlarged holes of pileated woodpeckers and flickers. Nests have been reported in birch, spruce, tamarac, poplar snags (Henderson 1919, 1925, Bent 1938), and occasionally on cliffs or in crow’s nests.