30 Facts About Ural owl

The Ural owl is a member of the genus Strix, that is the origin of the family's name under Linnaean taxonomy.

The Ural owl is something of a dietary generalist like many members of the Strix genus, but it is usually locally reliant on small mammals, especially small rodents such as voles.

The Ural owl is considered to be a stable bird species overall, with a conservation status per the IUCN as a least concern species.

The Ural owl has, for an owl, an exceptionally long tail that bears a wedge-shaped tip.

However, the Ural owl usually appears as a rather pale grey-brown owl, usually lacking in the warmer, richer colour tones of many other Strix owls, with distinct streaking below.

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Body masses reported for some of the more southerly Asian species such as brown wood owl and spotted wood owl show that they broadly overlap in body mass with the Ural owl or are even somewhat heavier typically despite being somewhat smaller in length, being somewhat stockier in build yet shorter tailed than the Ural owl.

The alarm call, which is typically delivered during territorial rounds, of the male is coincidentally analogous to the territorial song of the short-eared Ural owl, which is considered a somewhat hollow sounding hoot.

Ural owl is a fairly distinctive looking bird but can be confused for other owls, especially with others in the Strix genus.

The tawny Ural owl is much smaller with a conspicuously shorter tail and a relatively larger head.

An unlikely species to mistake a Ural owl is the Eurasian eagle-owl which is much larger with prominent ear tufts, a squarish head shape and orange eyes as well as with distinctly different markings.

Ural owl was named by Peter Simon Pallas in 1771 as Strix uralensis, due to the type specimen having been collected in the Ural mountains range.

The Ural owl is a member of the Strix genus, which are quite often referred to as wood owls.

Some species in America, such as namely the barred owl, are at times thought to be so closely related as well to the extreme that the Ural and barred and spotted owls, have been considered to potentially be part of a species complex or even within the same species.

Certainly the most ambiguous aspect of the relations of Ural owl is the Pere David's owl which has both historically and currently been considered either an isolated subspecies of the Ural owl or a distinct species.

Out of Russia, the range of the Ural owl continues into northeastern Mongolia, Northeastern China inland nearly as far as Beijing and down to Shandong and throughout the Korean Peninsula.

The Ural owl is largely restricted from areas where forest fragmentation has occurred or park-like settings are predominant, as opposed to the smaller, more adaptive tawny owl which acclimates favorably to such areas.

At least one Ural owl was recorded to habituate the city of Ljubljana in Slovenia but there was no evidence it was able to breed or establish a territory given the limited nature of woodlands in the vicinity.

Ural owl is often considered nocturnal with peaks of activity at dusk and just before dawn.

Ural owl is a highly territorial and residential species that, as a rule, tends to stay on the same home range throughout the year.

Across the wide distribution, the Ural owl is known to take more than 200 prey species, of which more than 80 are mammals.

The first verified record of scavenging on carrion was recorded when a Ural owl fed on the carcass of a roe deer, although an earlier record exists of a Ural owl visiting a wolf's kill.

Generally, in several parts to the west of their range, the Ural owl is associated with two vole prey species in particular, field voles and bank voles.

The eagle-Ural owl takes a large number of small prey such as voles but is conspicuously more variable in alternate foods.

The Ural owl has the potential to encounter other larger owls such as the snowy owl in winter and the Blakiston's fish owl in the far east of the range, but are unlikely to interact extensively given the differences in habitat usage.

The Ural owl is at times vulnerable to predation by larger predators when encounters occur.

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In one recorded instance, a Ural owl that was observed seemingly trying to prey upon a non-native American mink was seen to lose the confrontation when the mink turned the tables, having apparently overpowered, killed and ate the owl.

The Ural owl is itself a fairly formidable predator of smaller owl species, although not as prolific a killer as are eagle-owls and northern goshawks.

In one case in Norway, a Ural owl utilized a hole in a common aspen in the same tree where common mergansers were using a different hole.

Ural owl is not a densely populated bird but can be locally not uncommon.

In every regard but number of nestlings that were ringed, it has been observed the Ural is the 2nd commonest detected breeding owl after the boreal owl in Finland with 2545 territories found, 1786 nests observed and 4722 nestlings ringed.