Great Horned Owl with snow hare rabbit Painting Ceramic Tile

Great Horned Owl with snow hare by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. The great horned owl (Bubo virginianus), also known as the tiger owl (originally derived from early naturalists' description as the "winged tiger" or "tiger of the air") or the hoot owl, is a large owl native to the Americas. It is an extremely adaptable bird with a vast range and is the most widely distributed true owl in the Americas. Ernest T. Seton writing in 1890 captured the nature of this bird in describing My ample opportunities of fully observing these interesting birds in captivity as well as in a state of freedom, and indeed all that I have seen of them--their magnificent bearing; their objection to carrion, and strictly carnivorous tastes--would make me rank these winged tigers among the most pronounced and savage of the birds of prey. Its primary diet appears to be rabbits and hares, rats and mice and voles, although it freely hunts any animal it can overtake, primarily other rodents and small mammals, but also larger mid-sized mammals, various birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. In ornithological study, the great horned owl is often compared to the Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo), a closely related species which, despite the latter's notably larger size, occupies the same ecological niche in Eurasia, and the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), with which it often shares similar habitat, prey and nesting habits by day and is thus something of a diurnal ecological equivalent. The great horned owl is one of the earliest nesting birds in North America, often laying eggs weeks or even months before other raptorial birds.