Owls appear to be very solitary.  They get together to mate and have young, but the male does a lot of the hunting and the female stays on the nest and feeds the young.  When I went to count owls at Mount Vernon (there are Screech Owls near the parking lot, Barred Owls at the Tomb, and Great Horned Owls in the plastic Verizon tree), we began our soundings with those of the smaller owls because large owls eat smaller owls and we didn't want to scare the Screech Owls away.  We did not spot Screech Owls that night.  But when we went up to the Verizon tree which is the tallest on the property, the male Great Horned Owl called out.  He flew down first, made a loud hooting sound, then flew up.  The female made a softer hooting sound that sounded farther away.  Owls hunt many kinds of prey in a solitary manner and at night.  Burrowing Owls will form loose colonies and young owls may hang out with with each other before taking off on their own.  When our dog found Screech Owls in our local park (don't worry, I always leash him and he is a terrier and prefers rodents so he was curious as to why he found) I noticed the young had jumped the nest and the adults were up in the tree watching over them .  They young then jumped up other trees to get back to the nest. Within a day or two they had fledged and left the nest.  Owls will get mobbed by crows.  On the Audubon Winter Bird Count at Fort Belvoir we noticed mob action and spotted a Great Horned Owl. In Senegal, Owls are considered to be sorcerers and are regarded at a distance.  I find owls in movies, books, and art work.  Once at the National Gallery of Art East Wing there was a massive pairing done during the Edo period and owls were included.  Owls are fascinating and we love them in our family.

I was a steward for western purple martin colonies in the Pacific Northwest for many years, so it has been interesting to compare the information about owls’ life styles in this course with what I observed for purple martins. Purple martins are long-distance, inter-hemispheric migrants, which is a seasonal behavior for only a few owl species. Like owls, martins are cavity nesters, but they prefer colonial nesting conditions, whereas owls seem to be territorial with respect to nest sites (and hunting grounds?). Purple martins are exclusively insectivorous and feed on the wing, so their diet is limited compared to that of many owls, even the small owls that eat mostly insects and invertebrates. As an interesting aside:  During my time as a purple martin steward I was aware of two instances of “colony collapse” (sudden loss of adult birds & subsequent death of their chicks by starvation); at least one of those colony losses was documented to be caused by the nocturnal raids of an owl.