The Great Horned Owl, one of the most common and widespread owls in North America, stands two feet tall with a wingspread of up to five feet. Like many raptors, the female is larger than the male. Most active after dusk, they can also be seen in the late afternoon or morning in the more densely wooded areas of the park. Their cryptic coloration varies from shades of brown to gray, the better to blend in with tree bark and branches. Their contrasting orange-yellow eyes, as big as a human’s, are tubular and fixed in the head by a funnel-like series of bones, which is why owls have to bob and turn their head, up to 270 degrees, to focus on an object. They can see in the daytime as well as humans can and perhaps 50 times better at night because they have more night vision sensory cells than we have.
The many species of owls vary in their calls, but the whoo-who-who of the Great Horned Owl is the classic call we all know.