Are great horned owls nocturnal?

The most commonly spread true owl in the United States is the Great-horned Owl. It can be seen in many areas of the world. It can be found ranging from North America all the way down to South America. It is absent from some regions, such as the Amazon Basin, however, is evident across different areas of Latin America.

The resilience and large prey base of this owl enables it to live and flourish in almost any ecological zone. The Great-horned Owl can be found in the most extreme habitats such as deserts, deciduous forests, pampas, prairies, tundra, tropical rainforest, and mangroves. It is also suitable for urban living and can often be identified in playgrounds or picnic areas in cities.

This big owl has a variety of colors, ranging from black to brown and black to grey and white. It has bright yellow pupils, ear tufts, and a wing-like crest, which gives it the name. It has huge, strong feathered feet that it sometimes utilizes to take down prey much bigger than itself. 

The mature Great-horned Owl can be very vocal, with a deep, but powerful hoo hoo, and the young can be very noisy in the nest, making sounds like the Barn Owl that are shouting and hissing. Like most raptors, these owls are specialized predators. They frequently consume smaller animals such as fish and frogs.

Nearly all large predators have humans as their greatest threat. Top predators, such as the Great-horned Owl, are of great importance in nature by contributing to the control of prey species and the balance of their lives in the ecosystems. For the most part, the Great-horned

Great horned owl is nocturnal or busy at night. It enjoys its days on a healthy perch, laying eggs, or sleeping. The Great-horned Owl is particularly effective at capturing prey. Great Horned Owls are known to eat so many different kinds of animals, including rodents, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, etc.

They hunt at sunset and during the night, sometimes flying low over the ground while also wading into the water or moving through it. They use their sharp eyesight and ear to monitor for prey and then immediately jump on them. Like other owls and some other raptors, the Great-horned owls are tuned with a facial disk, a set of feathers surrounding their heads that enable direct sound to their ears.

To have an understanding of how it functions, place your hands behind your ears and hear – the sound will be smoother, and the sound will be stronger. Eagles and other birds have feathers that have been raised so that they can sense the slightest of sound in the night or when there are predators around. This sound shows where the surrounding prey animals are, making it much easier for owls to cunningly swoop in to capture a meal.

Great-horned Owls can consume a whole rodent, similar to the way that they eat mice. When hunting big prey, they need to tear off bite-sized pieces of meat. When an owl swallows its prey, the owl swallows anything into its own mouth. It will continue to throw everything back out until all that is left is the bones, teeth, paws, and fur or feathers.

This could be hard to swallow, particularly for an owl. All these indigestible pieces are regurgitated
in the form of a pellet. The pellet is dark and oval in shape and it is coated with dried fur or feathers.
This suggests that the fossil was once a living body. In fact, scientists have been able to find the entire skeleton of a potential owl's prey in some owl pellets.