The Winner for Most Invasive Owl Species!
January 19, 2025



Guess who just won a Golden Owl Pellet Award for Most Invasive Owl Species in North America? Yours truly, Strix varia, the Barred Owl! Check it out. Listen to the North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Tufts University! Oh, I am so proud of myself!

Murder, She Hooted
November 29, 2024



Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I would like to defend my species, Strix varia, commonly known as the Barred Owl, against two charges today: first, the murder of Kathleen Peterson, and second, the willful endangerment of another owl species, videlicit the Spotted Owl, aka Strix occidentalis.

As to the first case, I had nothing to do with the murder of the wife of author Michael Peterson. I don't care how many microscopic feathers that his defense attorney claims to have found in the victim's coiffure¹. What possible motive could I have had for killing her? Besides, I was being dive-bombed by a murder of crows at the time, if you must know. I do admit to harassing the occasional jogger in the Pacific Northwest², and I may have appropriated a ball cap or two as I was playfully pursuing them -- all in good, wholesome fun, you understand -- but such attacks generally occur during my mating season, when I am naturally high-strung, and guess what? Our mating season does not begin until March, whereas the murder in question took place in December³.

I rest my case -- or I rest THAT case, at all events.

Incidentally, Judge, if you want to talk about murder, let's talk about the 2023 plans of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to kill almost half a million Barred Owls over the next 30 years⁴. And why? Because we Barred Owls are crowding out the Spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest, if you please!

What's that, Judge? Yes, I understand: the Fish & Wildlife Service is not on trial here. Yes, I understand. Yes, I will confine my future remarks to the allegations that my species is endangering the Spotted Owl. (All right, already!)

I concede the geographical evidence, Your Honor. My species has definitely taken up abode in the Pacific Northwest and even in parts of Northwestern Canada over the last 50 years. But here's the real question:

How did we Barred Owls get to the Pacific Northwest in the first place, given that our original territory prior to the 1980s was the eastern half of the United States and Canada? I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that we were smuggled out there by human beings, present company excepted, of course, in clear violation of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. We are a notoriously sedentary species, after all, and we are not in the habit of dropping everything on a moment's notice and moving to California like the Beverly Hillbillies or whatever.

And now to close my defense of this latter charge, I adduce a relevant quotation from the Bird Feeder Hub website. Ahem, ahem...

"Barred Owls don't migrate with the seasons. In fact, they don't travel much at all, tending to stay within a 6-10 mile radius of their territory⁵."

So when we showed up in California in the 1980s⁶, it was no doubt in the back of a pickup truck.

In conclusion, Judge, if we are endangering the Spotted Owl, it is by force of circumstances, and there is nothing willful about it.

I rest my second case. (Ooh, I am good! But then I've always preened myself on my courtroom savvy.)

Now, if I could just say a word about the Fish & Wildlife Service...

No? Okay, fine. No harm in asking.

Editor's Note: I wouldn't dismiss the kidnapping allegation out of hand. The Barred Owl has been around for 11,000 years, and it's interesting that its arrival in the area we now call California occurred less than 50 years ago, not long after the invention of the automobile, at least when that invention is considered against the backdrop of geological time⁷. Still, most ornithologists have other ideas. In his popular story in Hakai on the Barred Owl's migration, Jude Isabella opines as follows:

"The simplest story is that the owls crossed the Great Plains of the United States, flapping from one patch of trees to the next as arboreal stands emerged from grasslands once routinely shorn by bison and kept clear through fires lit by Indigenous peoples.⁸"

Meh, could be.










1: Was an Owl the Real Culprit in the Peterson Murder Mystery?, Audubon
2: No, Barred Owls Are Not Trying to Kill You, Audubon
3: Barred Owl Behavioral Habits: Nesting, Mating, Diet, Wild Bird Watching
4: Barred Owl Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
5: 30 Quick Facts About Barred Owls, Bird Feeder Hub
6: 10 Fun Facts About the Barred Owl, Audubon
7: Barred Owl, Britannica
8: These owls spread from east to west. Not everyone is pleased., Popular Science