Habitats of Suburban Barred Owls (Strix varia) and Red-Shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus) in Southwestern Ohio1

Abstract

Little is known about the habitat and ecology of suburban Barred Owls (Strix varia), a species sometimes considered the nocturnal equivalent of Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus). We compared nesting habitat of Barred Owls to that of Red-shouldered Hawks nesting in suburban and urban areas, in and near the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, to determine whether any features distinguished owl nest sites from hawk nest sites. We characterized habitat and land-cover metrics in circular plots of 100 ha and 15 ha, centered on the owl and hawk nests, using ATtiILa software operating within a GIS environment. For the 100-ha plots, the primary cover type in the plots surrounding nests of both species was forest, 41.4 ± 3.4% for Barred Owl plots and 45.9 ± 3.4% for Red-shouldered Hawk plots, followed by low-density residential land: 29.8 ± 4.8% of the Barred Owl plots and 29.3 ± 3.7% of the Red-shouldered Hawk plots. Pasture composed <15% of the plot area for both species and the remainder of the cover types contributed even less. Values of land-cover percentages and metrics did not differ between the species (P > 0.05), for either the large plots or the small (15-ha) plots. Using stepwise binary logit regression analysis, we found that no variables discriminated owl plots from hawk plots. We concluded, based on our methodology, that habitat of suburban Barred Owls differed little from habitat of suburban Red-shouldered Hawks in southwestern Ohio.