The hooting season is upon us.
The hooters, of course, are Georgia’s big owls, the great horned and the barred. Although they may be heard calling during all seasons, their hooting really cranks up this time of year.
It’s all about courtship and pair bonding. With its breeding season about to start, the great horned owl — Georgia’s largest and fiercest owl — is a particularly vocal hooter now. (For the barred owl, the season will begin in mid-January.)
Great horned male-female pairs normally remain together for life, using hooting and other sounds during the year to communicate. Come breeding time and establishing of territory, however, their hooting becomes more vociferous, purposeful and synchronized — a prominent reminder that winter is at hand.
Around sunset on those chilly evenings, you’re likely to hear the love-sick great horned owl’s eerie, muffled “hoo-hoo-hooo hoo-hoo” resonating through campgrounds, suburban parks, farmyards — even backyards. Deep hoots come from the males; slightly higher pitched ones come from the larger females.
The great horned owl’s timing makes it one of the state’s earliest nesting birds (another is the bald eagle). In the dead of winter, when temperatures may be well below freezing, the birds will be incubating their eggs, even hatchng out babies.
Even though their breeding season is just starting, great horned owls actually began scouting for nesting sites around September. They don’t build their own nests, though — instead, they seize the nests of hawks, crows, ospreys, squirrels and even bald eagles.
The other creatures aren’t likely to argue with the ferocious great horned owls, which prey on just about anything that moves.
This season, if all goes well, you may be able to watch via real-time webcam a nesting pair of great horned owls at the Landings subdivision on Skidaway Island near Savannah. Audubon Society members set up the webcam last season when they discovered the nest. Watch at landingsbirdcam.com.
In a month or so, barred owls will start announcing themselves with their deep “who cooks for you” hoots — but probably not in the same territory with the great horned owls, who they fear.
In the sky: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be last-quarter Wednesday. Venus rises out of the east about three hours before sunrise. Mars rises out of the east about 3 a.m. Jupiter rises out of the east just after midnight.
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