By really tuning in to Great Horned Owls, you can actually identify individuals by their hoot.  They use different pitches, different rhythms, and different numbers of notes in their hoots.  Below you'll meet the owls you'll read about in Alice News, since they sometimes interact with Alice, and often interact with each other.  Sound files are included to help you get a feel for the individual differences in Great Horned Owl hoots.  Keep in mind these are all Midwestern birds, so the owls in your neck of the woods may sound a bit different.

If you've gotten this far, you probably already know Alice the Great Horned Owl.  She's a permanently injured, human-imprinted Great Horned Owl who was hatched in Antigo, WI in 1997.  She lives in our home and works with me as an education bird at the Houston Nature Center.  Click below to hear her hoot.  The second "note" is a triplet.

Wheezy was so named because the first few times we heard her, her voice was so hoarse we thought she was sick!  It just turns out that if she hooted a lot her voice cracked and sounded wheezy.  She was Wendell's mate, and they used to call our yard part of their territory until they were booted out by Victor and Virginia early in 2005.  Wheezy had two triplets in her hoot, and she most certainly wore the pants in that family.  She was a very aggressive hooter.  

Sadly, she was found on the ground at a neighbor's farm in August 2006.  After a valiant fight (and a lot of biting of her handlers at the University of Minnesota Raptor Center!!) she was humanely euthanized due to the permanent damage that had been done to her body by West Nile Virus.  Judging from the layering on her bill, she was an old bird.

Wendell is Wheezy's widower.  This is a photo of an owl that showed up in the neighbor's chicken coop when it was still in Wendell & Wheezy's territory.  I was able to walk up to the owl in the coop and grab it.  It may or may not be Wendell himself, but I have a gut feeling it might be, given Wendell's less-than-aggressive attitude toward territorial defense and this owl's paralysis with fear in the chicken coop.  Wendell has what in my mind is the stereotypical Great Horned Owl hoot.  He's off in the distance, so turn up your sound to hear him!

Virginia is the new girl on the block.  She and her mate, Victor, claimed our yard as part of their territory by chasing Wendell and Wheezy off to the east.  Virginia is an owl of few words.  Most of her hooting time is spent directed at Alice, but sometimes she duets with her man.  Her hoot is very similar to Alice's.

Victor is Virginia's mate.  He's a he-man of an owl, and likes to hoot a lot.  The second note of his hoot comes off as a vibrato.  He also has a stepped up wild hoot that he gives when he's really worked up in addition to his regular hoot.

                (regular hoot)                        (wild hoot)

Cedric is the male on the next territory east of Wendell and Wheezy.  My neighbor often hears him hooting to the east of his house, and despite the fact that Cedric's territorial boundary is over one mile from my house, I have heard him hooting with his mate, Molly.  His hoot is similar to Wendell's.

Molly is Cedric's mate.  She has a hoot with a fun variation on the second to the last syllable of her hoot.