eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

Hello once again,

Before we get started... Be sure to enter our new "Give the Latin Name to That Bird!" contest! It’s still free, still painless, still fun, and it still has a great prize! But the calendar is still ticking. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?) January 26th, 2007 is approaching fast...

Ok, It’s Sunday, and time once again for the “Bird of the Week!” As Otis (our resident Eastern Screech-Owl) has continued to grace our backyard with his presence, it seems only proper that Megascops asio (sometimes called Otus asio) of the Strigidae family take center stage as “Bird of the Week.”


These stoic nocturnal hunters occupy the eastern half of the U.S., and can range into small areas of both Canada and Mexico.

Otis and his ilk just might have a few surprises for you...

• They are ravenous eaters, and can consume up to 25% of their body weight in a single night.
• They will kill and eat pretty much anything that won’t eat them including mice, moles, rats, insects, spiders, crawfish, frogs, bats, snakes, chipmunks, squirrels, fish, lizards... You get the idea. (With a diet like that, one would hope that they hunt breath mints as well.)
• The female is slightly larger than the male, though both mature sexes have a wingspan of roughly 24”.
• You can listen to (and learn more about) the Eastern Screech-Owl (including Otis) at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site.

Keep submitting comments to enter our contest via the link at the top of this post, and please feel free to comment on this and any other post as well.

See you by the feeders,

CapeCodAlan

References used for this post are listed below:

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Wikipedia
• Audubon Society
• U.S. Geological Survey
• The National Audubon Society’s “The Sibley Guide to Birds”
• ”Birds Of North America” published by Golden
• ”Birds of New England” from Smithsonian Handbooks