A Tale of Two Kitties

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But even more astonishing than the homed owl's vision is its hearing. Think of a satellite dish—a large, saucer-shaped receiver designed to catch incoming signals, then amplify and direct them to a centrally located receiver. Now, if you were to put a satellite dish on a-motor-driven ball-bearing mount that constantly rotated the dish through a scanning range of 270° or so, you'd have something approaching the owl's face. That large, rounded visage actually contains two receiver dishes, one around each eye. The ear openings—elongated vertical slits on either side of the skull—are positioned so as best to receive the sounds picked up, magnified and redirected by the facial disks.

There's more: The owl's ear openings are asymmetrical, with the left slit mounted lower and opening downward, while the right ear is a bit higher on the skull, opens slightly upward and is somewhat smaller than the left. With this arrangement, sounds are read by the owl's brain in something approaching stereo, allowing the hunter, by rotating its satellite-dish head, to pinpoint the direction and distance of a sound's origin.

And finally, complementing all of that, the owl's ears are particularly sensitive to high-frequency sounds... such as the squeaks uttered by typical prey animals: mice, voles, rats and chipmunks.

Among the great homed owl's favorite dinner guests are rabbits and hares, and its normal hunting technique—so scientific consensus would have it—is either to sit motionless on a high perch and watch and listen for movement, or to patrol low and slow over its hunting territory with all senses alert.

But there may well be more to it than mere patient waiting and methodical patrolling. In his eloquent Desert Solitaire (Simon and Schuster, 1968), the West's anarchic "non-naturalist," Edward Abbey, puts forth an original and compelling theory for a considerably more imaginative homed owl hunting caper:

"I am not alone. From the vicinity of Balanced Rock comes the cry of the great horned owl. Suppertime, for the owl. The mice, squirrels, gophers, rabbits know what I mean. What is he up to? Rather than hunt for his supper the owl seems to be calling his supper to come to him. He calls again and again, always from the same place, not moving, in a voice which seems to come from not one spot alone but—anywhere. A war of nerves.

"His nervous, timorous prey, terribly insecure, hear that cry and tremble. Where exactly is the owl? Perhaps the next shrub, the next rock, would offer better concealment than this. They hesitate. The great horned owl cries again and a rabbit breaks, dashes for what might be a better place, revealing his position. Quiet as a moth the owl swoops down."

When a prey animal is located—by whatever method—the owl glides down "quiet as a moth" until, at the critical moment, the predator suddenly flares its wings and hauls back its head to air-brake the descent, at the same time extending its feathered legs down and forward, talons agape, to snatch the unsuspecting meal, and often render it lifeless, in one fell swoop.
In addition to the mice, squirrels, gophers and rabbits Abbey notes, the great horned owl will also take weasels, snakes, lizards, frogs, birds (including an occasional chicken)... and, of course, errant kitties.

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