Owl that eats rock pocket mouse4/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Nests are about 10 inches across and 2 inches tall. The nest is sometimes built atop one from the previous year. The Short-eared Owl is one of the few owls to construct its own nest: a bowl scraped out of the ground by the female and lined with grasses and downy feathers. They usually choose dry sites-often on small knolls, ridges, or hummocks-with enough vegetation to conceal the incubating female. Short-eared Owls nest on the ground amid grasses and low plants. They often take off the wings of birds before eating them. ![]() They decapitate and eviscerate small mammals before swallowing them whole. In Hawaii, the Short-eared Owl is a key predator of the endangered Hawaiian Thrush. They also eat birds including adult and nestling terns, gulls, shorebirds, songbirds, storm-petrels, and rails. Short-eared Owl populations tend to fluctuate in close association with the cycling populations of their mammalian prey. These owls also eat shrews, moles, lemmings, rabbits, pocket gophers, bats, rats, weasels, and muskrats. Short-eared Owls eat mostly small mammals, especially mice and voles. When food is plentiful, winter areas often become breeding areas. Winter habitat is similar, but is more likely to include large open areas within woodlots, stubble fields, fresh and saltwater marshes, weedy fields, dumps, gravel pits, rock quarries, and shrub thickets. Short-eared Owls live in large, open areas with low vegetation, including prairie and coastal grasslands, heathlands, meadows, shrubsteppe, savanna, tundra, marshes, dunes, and agricultural areas. ![]()
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