Blake and Tweeters,

I suspect that Great Horned Owls are relatively infrequent predators
of Eastern Gray Squirrels, for the simple reason that the squirrels
are diurnal (day-active), but the owls are mainly nocturnal. For the
same reason, flying squirrels (which are nocturnal) are the key prey
species of Spotted Owls in many areas, but diurnal tree squirrels are
rather rare prey for Spotted Owls.

Of course, Great Horned Owls are not STRICTLY nocturnal-- they do hunt
sometimes in late afternoon before it's dark, and may catch gray
squirrels then.

There may be some predation studies from the eastern U.S., where
Eastern Gray Squirrels and Horned Owls overlap broadly in range, that
give some indication of the frequency of predation. However, I suspect
that Eastern Gray Squirrels are of too recent origin in most of the
Northwest for any such studies to have been done.

If anyone knows of (or can find) studies with data on Great Horned Owl
predation on squirrels, please post it here!

Wayne C. Weber
Kamloops and Delta, BC
contopus at shaw.ca


----- Original Message -----
From: Blake Iverson <coopershwk at hotmail.com>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: Gray squirrel predators


> I totally forgot about the owls. DUH! :) It's no amazement that a
GHO will
> take a squirrel, GHO's will eat just about anything, hawks, owls,
herons,
> corvids, whatever.
>
> Blake Iverosn
> Arlington, WA
> coopershwk at hotmail.com
>
>