Great Horned Owl –
An owl with horns, that is about as cool as it gets. Except that they aren’t horns, of course, just tufts of feathers. But the whole package of huge predatory bird and large yellow eyes and ‘horns’ makes for a great animal. Their average wingspan is four feet long!
There is an owl for every habitat, but great horned owls generally live in dense forests or woodlands. They hunt at night and eat all types of rodents, including rabbits, that live in surrounding fields and abandoned home sites. They eat the small animals whole which leads to a great benefit to science.
They regurgitate the leftover bones and fur as a hard pellet. Pellets are a lot of fun to pull apart and dissect. They contain perfectly cleaned skeletons of whatever the bird ate. I have a collection of mice skulls I have found in owl pellets over the years.
