Source: Into Birds
If you look closely at an owl’s eyes, you’ll notice the owl’s eye colors are different.
The color of an owl’s eyes tells a story about their lives.
An owl’s eye color helps us identify their species and indicates the time of day they predominantly hunt.
Although this isn’t always accurate with every owl species, as a birdwatcher, it helps pinpoint your best chances of seeing one.
Dark Brown or Black Owl’s Eyes
Owls with dark brown or black eyes are nocturnal, meaning they prefer to hunt at night.
The dark eye color doesn’t help the owls to see in the dark. It’s an evolutionary trait to help them to camouflage in the darkness.
There are many species of owls with dark eye colors, including the Northern Spotted Owl, Barred Owl, and Barn Owl.
You might have some of these owls in your back yard right now.
Barred Owls are large gray-brown and white birds with round heads, no ear tufts, brown eyes, and a small sharp dull yellow beak.This owl is named after the bars on its chest.
These owls can capture prey in total darkness with their incredible sense of hearing.
There’s a chance you might see one of these owls in daylight on a cloudy day, but these sightings are treasured moments.
Orange Owl’s Eyes
Owls with orange eyes are crepuscular, meaning they’re active during low light periods such as dusk and dawn.
Owls with orange eyes prefer hunting for their meal in the soft light of the early morning.
Species of owls with orange eyes include the Eurasian Eagle-owl. Eurasian Eagle-owls are visually striking animals with their bright orange eyes, mottled feathers, and ears tufts.
Yellow Owl’s Eyes
Owls with yellow eyes are diurnal and prefer to hunt during the daytime.
Great Gray Owls are patterned with fine white, gray, and brown streaking and faint barring. Their yellow eyes shine through the fine gray-and-brown concentric circles of their facial disk with two pale arcs forming an “X” between their eyes. Their habits are just like humans.
Owls with yellow eyes are active in the day and sleep at night.
Common owls with yellow eyes include Burrowing Owl, Great Gray Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Short-earned Owl, Great Horned Owl and the Snowy Owl.
Their beauty is simply undeniable.
These owls have excellent eyesight but rely on their hearing to detect mice or other small rodents moving beneath the snow.
Then they swoop down and grab their prey with their talons.
The Short-eared owl has pale yellow to bright sulphur-yellow eyes with a greyish-brown cere, and a blackish bill. Their tiny ear-tufts are set close together near the center of its forehead, often not visible, and erected only when excited.
Luck is When Preparation Meets Opportunity
Success at finding an owl often results from being in the right place at the right time.
The Great Horned Owl is the quintessential owl of storybooks with its intimidating yellow-eyed stare The Great Horned Owl is the quintessential owl of storybooks with its intimidating yellow-eyed stare It takes patience, persistence, preparation, and some luck.
But the chance of seeing a beautiful up-close is worth the effort.
Now get out and see some owls.
Thank you, this is such a fun collection, I’m going to be reading for a while!
Actually, I’ve realised I do have a couple of questions.
Lately I’m collecting photos of colourful and/or weird looking birds, preferably ones that look like little jewels perched in trees.
Are there any colourful owls, or are they all camouflaged to their environments? And what would you say is the weirdest owl?
Some threads of note:
Owls in other languages
Extinct Stilt-Owls
The most popular picture I’ve posted so far
This guy is what I came up with the other week when I went looking for colorful owls. As you said, they’re all designed for concealment. I have posted some albino and melanistic owls too, so it is best seeing ones the opposite color they’re supposed to be.
You can find some barn owls with very beautiful spotted patterns though.
The Oriental Bay Owl is probably the most unusual looking to me.
But Fish Owls look the most different from picture to picture.
Looking at the Oriental Bay Owl I wonder if Studio Ghibli got some inspiration out of them. Very mystic and a little bit frightning. Very cool.
Anyone looking at strange creatures for artistic inspiration would do well checking the OBO out.
I’m glad to see people are still checking out the older posts!
There is all the fun content right? And I doubt a lot has changed overtime, but I’m not an expert so I could be mistaken by the owl-dynamic.
For me, it’s new & interesting.
(I don’t know what OBO is…searching on the interweb didn’t clear this up. Can you give me some clue search words? Thank you in advance )
It is definitely still good! I’m just happy new people are still coming here and checking out the older posts.
We are still learning new facts about owls because they are a difficult animal to study. One recent development is scientists are reevaluating owl populations as they are learning owls like three Snowy Owl don’t always migrate back to the same spots, so large numbers have been counted 2 or 3 times, so owls we thought were numerous may not be and need protection.
I just abbreviated Oriental Bay Owl as OBO.
Ah. That explains my search-results.
And I firmly believe ALL owls need protection, useful and legendary animals that they are.
I agree, though if you want a counterpoint, read about Barred Owls and their impact on Northern Spotted Owls.
There is a proposal to kill 400,000 Barred Owls to try to save the Spotted Owls. I see both sides of the argument, and the government is going to take outside proposals soon, but governments seem to place owls pretty low on the priority list.
British Columbia Canada is taking a lot of heat in the press because they are down to a single wind Spotted Owl and are still ignoring emergency action. Very disappointing.
This one is nocturnal as it has dark eyes, right?
The buff-fronted owl with the heterochromia was surprisingly colourful too.
Thank you for the links!
The first is a Spotted Wood Owl, and he’s nocturnal.
I’m glad you liked them! I enjoy getting feedback, so don’t be afraid to comment on things, even if it’s just “nice owl!” or something like that. If you ask questions, I try to answer them, but there’s a lot of owls we don’t know that much about once you get away from the really common ones.
I some how completely missed the other pictures in your comment after opening the spotted wood owl one, and scrolled past to the next comment you left with the thread links.
Barn owls are surprisingly beautiful for being such a funny shape.
The Oriental Bay owl lools like it’s trying really hard to pass itself off as a non-specific small mustelid, but couldn’t quite get the eyes right. Anyone else see it?
Have you seen Black Books? Fish owl looks like if you smushed Bernard, Fran and Manny together and made them an owl.
Thanks for sharing those with me, they were entertaining!
It does look a bit stoat-like in the face.
I haven’t heard of Black Books, but it seems highly rated. I’ll have to see if I can check it out.
You might have already done this, but a ‘talons’ post similar to this one on eyes would be very interesting. Thank you for this community!
There was a bit of talon talk with the Powerful Owl post and I think one about how talons keep sleeping baby owls from falling out of trees, but nothing comprehensive. I can do some research for that though.
I’ll check out the Powerful Owl, thanks!
No problem!
I’ve pulled a bunch of info on talons. I’m going to have to write up something good, so I’ll probably post it next weekend. I need to find lots of pictures and get everything in an order that makes sense. There are some really cool facts, but without visuals, it’s a bit tough to understand some of the anatomy that makes it all work.
Thank you for your time and efforts!