That is such a great photo! ❤️

They keep coming! I'm going to have to mix in some other fish owls as well. Some Brown or Tawny would mix it up.

Most owls, and up to around 90% of bird species are monogamous. That may not always fit a human definition of monogamy (sometimes it is just for one mating season, we'll touch on this again), but monogamy for birds, especially birds of prey, makes a ton of sense.

Most owls don't migrate. They will spend most of their lives a few miles from where they were born. But owls are territorial out of necessity. Eating live prey, their food source can be limited and variable. Owls also do not build nests and either rely on existing nests or natural cavities, which are also generally very limited resources. They will also have a number of roosts where they can hunt or rest safely. By only allowing one other bird in this area, sharing is kept to a minimum, and twice the bird power is available to guard this territory. From what I hear, many owls won't hang out with their partners too much outside of nesting season, and will communicate, but still live largely apart in that shared territory so they are less competition for each other. When they are nesting and raising young, they show tremendous partnership and dedication to each other, both putting their lives on the line for each other and the young.

Owls that do migrate often return to where they came from (they know the site worked, after all) but not always. Owls like Snowies mainly move to follow their prey, so they don't always return to the same places, and may not run into their previous partner the next year. While they are together though, it is typically monogamous.

This spring, I do recall sharing a story here of a very successful Saw Whet that was providing for 2 nests with 2 different females. Food must have been very abundant! The male does all the hunting for himself, the female, and any offspring, so one nest is already a very intense job. He's also responsible for chasing off the bulk of the predators, since mom will seldom leave the nest. The amount of eggs they will lay also seems to frequently vary with prey availability, since they know how many babies they can support.

So continuing partnerships play a lot of roles in helping the owls succeed. It's a lot less stress in a lot of ways, and during some of the difficult times of the year, they can team up to split workloads. Owls will "divorce" though, if the find an upgrade or if a partner isn't doing a good job pulling their weight.

To look amazing! 😜

The leading theory is non-verbal communication, like with dog/cat ears or tails can be used for. They can be moved voluntarily like most of their other feathers, so they can be up, down, one up-one down, or anywhere in between. If you look at the comments of the SEO post today, I share a few pics of one of my GHO at the clinic, and they are held differently in all 3 pics.

The other idea (I'm not a fan of this one) is that they help them with camouflage, look more like a stick, break up their outline, etc. They're usually pretty small, so I don't see how it would help all that much, and it's not like the horned owls appear much more difficult to find than round headed owls.