Eastern Screech-Owl

 The eastern screech-owl is a small owl that is found in the eastern half of the United States, south-eastern Canada, and north eastern Mexico.  They can be found in a variety of different habitats including suburban and metropolitan areas. The main priority for habitat is available cavities, since they are a cavity nester. This can be a tree cavity or a man made cavity such as a nesting box. Like most owls they stick on their nesting territory through out the entire year and do not migrate during the winter unless their is a shortage of prey.

Like most raptors there is no difference in color between male and female eastern screech-owls.females are typically larger than males however it is difficult to tell by size with out one of the opposite sex to reference. However, as you can probably guess by these photos, there are two different color variations of eastern screech-owl. About 70% of the population is gray, like the wild owl in the first photo. The other 30% are red like Mestaae above. Mestaae is an educational raptor at The Raptor Center. The percentage of red screech-owls is higher in the east with only about 15% red at the western edges of their range.