The Great Horned Owls Are Quite Big But What Is The Actual Great Horned Owl Size?

Generally before we know The Great Horned Owl Size, We Need To Know What This ”Great Birds” Are.

The Great horned owl is a round-faced bird with the distinctive horn-shaped feather tuft on the crown of its head, which is darker than the rest of its head, promoting the overall camouflage.

Great Horned Owl

The owl possesses powerful, solid legs, feet and claws. The Great horned owl has binocular vision due to its eyes, facing forward.

The eyes of the horned owl are various shades of yellow. This bird can also be distinguished by the white colored patch on its throat.

Black and brown stripes extend all over the white underbelly. The bill of the bird is black, surrounded by white or tan colored plumage.

Plumage on their back is darker, covered with brown and black markings.

What Is The Size Of Great Horned Owl

Adult owls can reach the overall length of 63 cm with females moderately bigger than the males.

Compared to an adult goose, great horned owls are smaller but they are certainly bigger than a crow. Let us dig deeper into the great horned owl.

Found throughout the North and South America, the great horned owl measures around 18.1-24.8 in (46-63 cm). They have a wingspan of about 39.8-57.1 in (101-145 cm) averaging 122 cm (48 in).

Females are only slightly smaller than males. Males weigh up to 3.545 lb while females averaging 2.698 lb.

Great horned owls are the second heaviest owls in North America.

The great horned owl is a close relative of a snowy owl but great horned and snowy owls do not appear to share any physical features. They look way different from each other.

The mean length of the wing chord is about 297–400 mm (11.7–15.7 in). The surface-to-area volume of an owl’s wing is comparatively smaller.

The wingspan probably doesn’t reconcile with the overall physiology of the owl—perhaps one thought that it could have been little bigger.

Like most other owls, the great horned owl has a pretty short tail measuring around 175 to 252 mm (6.9 to 9.9 in).

The hoot owl does seem to possess one of the most powerful legs and talons.

They have the biggest foot span in comparison to that of long-eared owls or even barn owl.

In fact, the great horned owl’s foot span is even greater than the biggest owl species—great grey owl.

The foot span of a great horned owl measures up to 20 cm (7.9 in) while the great grey owl has 18 cm (7.1 in) long foot span.

Thanks to their powerful legs and talons great horned owls are able to exert 300 PSI of crushing power—almost making it possible for the prey to escape.

The amazing crushing power has lately caught the attention of many researchers in that they believe that it can be compared with the talon’s force of a golden eagle.

Great horned owls have got the biggest eyes of all terrestrial vertebrates.

Their eyes are slightly smaller than ours. The bigger eyes obviously means wider field of binocular vision at night.

However big its eyes may be, the great horned owl must turn its head to take a look at its prey.

Population

Currently, these birds are fairly widespread all over the area of their habitat.

The overall estimated population of these owls in North and South America is about 5,300,000 individuals.

Great horned owls are classified on the IUCN Red List as a species of Least Concern (LC) with a stable population.

Credit:

http://animalia.bio/great-horned-owl