Owls are birds, and most owls are awake and hunt at night. Owls have big eyes, but they cannot move their eyes around, so they turn their whole heads instead, and an owl can turn its head far around to look behind it. Owls also bob and sway their heads to judge distance, and owls cannot see in total darkness. Let's see how an owl finds its way in the dark.

An owl's ears are holes in its head, hidden under feathers, and the ring of feathers around an owl's face, called the facial disc, helps funnel sound to its ears. An owl can hear a mouse step on a twig from about 75 feet (23 meters) away. A great gray owl can find a rodent under the snow by sound. Many owls fly almost without a sound, and the outer wing feathers have a comb-like edge that helps quiet their flight.

Let's look at what owls eat and how they hunt. Owls catch small animals such as mice to eat, and they eat many kinds of prey, from small mammals to birds, lizards and insects. A few owls eat fish. Barn owls eat many rats, mice and voles. A snowy owl's favorite food is lemmings, and it is a patient hunter that waits on a perch and then flies after its prey.

Now let's see what happens to the food. Owls grab their food with sharp claws called talons. Owls have no teeth, so they often swallow their food whole, and they cough up pellets of fur and bones that they cannot digest. Taking apart an owl pellet shows what the owl ate. Many owls also hide extra food and come back to eat it later. Owls help people by eating rodents such as mice and rats.

Most owls do not build their own nests, but use old nests of other birds or holes in trees. Burrowing owls nest in holes in the ground, and they often use burrows dug by other animals, such as prairie dogs, ground squirrels and badgers. Snowy owls spend the summer on the cold, treeless tundra of the far north, and they often fly south from the Arctic in winter. As of November 2026, scientists recognize more than 200 kinds of owls.

Words to know

• prey: hunted animals
• pellets: fur-and-bone balls
• facial: of the face
• tundra: treeless land
• burrows: holes underground