Most Hoosiers have heard an owl call across a dark field without ever spotting the bird that made it. That’s not surprising, since the various types of owls in Indiana are almost entirely nocturnal, and even the state’s largest species can vanish into a tree line in seconds.
Indiana hosts eight regularly occurring owl species, ranging from a two-pound arctic visitor that shows up only in irruption winters to a sparrow-sized hunter that migrates through the state’s woodlots every autumn. Some, like the great horned owl, live here year-round and raise young in the dead of winter. Others, like the snowy owl, only pass through when food runs short farther north.
| Species | Typical Size | Best Field Mark | Indiana Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barn Owl | 13-16 in. | Heart-shaped white face | State endangered, year-round in south |
| Eastern Screech-Owl | 7-10 in. | Ear tufts, gray or red morph | Common year-round resident |
| Great Horned Owl | 18-25 in. | Prominent “horn” tufts | Common year-round resident |
| Snowy Owl | 20-28 in. | Mostly white plumage | Rare winter visitor |
| Barred Owl | 17-24 in. | Dark eyes, no ear tufts | Common year-round resident |
| Long-eared Owl | 13-16 in. | Long, close-set ear tufts | Uncommon winter visitor |
| Short-eared Owl | 13-17 in. | Buoyant, moth-like flight | Rare, grassland specialist |
| Northern Saw-whet Owl | 7-8 in. | No ear tufts, tiny size | Migrant and winter resident |
1. Barn Owl
The barn owl (Tyto alba) is the ghost-faced species most people picture when they hear the word “owl” in a horror movie, and in Indiana it’s also the rarest of the eight resident species. The barn owl is the most widely distributed of all owls and is found on all continents except Antarctica, but ill-equipped for cold weather, barn owls are much more common in southern Indiana. Fewer than 50 nests are found annually in Indiana.
Barn owls are a state endangered species due to loss of permanent grassland habitats for them to hunt, such as pastures, hayfields, and prairies. Barn owls need large areas of pasture, hayfields, grasslands or wet meadows that have populations of meadow voles, their favorite food. Nests have been found in silos, water towers, belfries and building steeples as old wooden barns disappear from the landscape.
The state’s conservation response has been substantial. Biologists and volunteers have installed more than 400 nest boxes during the past three decades to provide nesting opportunities that are protected from severe weather and predators. That effort is paying off: a statewide check of 355 barn owl nest boxes in 2022 found a record-high 82 active nests, and 75 of those (91%) were in nest boxes installed on interior barn walls.
Pro Tip: Because barn owls hunt low over open fields at dusk rather than perching in visible trees, your best chance of spotting one is scanning hay meadows and pasture edges in southern Indiana right after sunset.
Landowners with suitable pasture or hayfield habitat can get directly involved in recovery work. Since 1983, the Indiana DNR’s Division of Fish and Wildlife has monitored barn owl populations and installed more than 400 nesting boxes, and the Indiana Barn Owl Initiative now lets residents sponsor a barn owl nesting box by covering the costs for assembly and installation. Full details on nest box specifications and current monitoring data are available through the Indiana DNR’s barn owl program page.
2. Eastern Screech-Owl
The eastern screech-owl (Megascops asio) is the small, chunky owl responsible for most of the eerie trilling heard from suburban yards and woodlots after dark. It’s a small, large-headed owl with prominent ear tufts that occurs in both gray and red morphs. Red and gray individuals occur across its range, with about one-third of all individuals being red.
- Yellow eyes and a patterned, bark-like plumage that provides excellent daytime camouflage
- A body roughly the size of a robin, though noticeably bulkier
- A voice that carries farther than its size would suggest, with a descending whinny and a mellow trill
Common east of the Rockies in woods, suburbs, and parks, the eastern screech-owl is found wherever trees are, and it’s even willing to nest in backyard nest boxes. Diet is opportunistic and surprisingly varied: this owl eats most kinds of small animals, including birds and mammals as well as surprisingly large numbers of earthworms, insects, crayfish, tadpoles, frogs, and lizards, along with rats, mice, squirrels, moles, rabbits, and even jays, grouse, and doves. When prey is plentiful, it caches extra food in tree holes for as long as four days.
Pro Tip: Listen for a noisy gang of blue jays or chickadees scolding something in a tree during daylight hours. A commotion of blue jays, chickadees, and titmice mobbing a screech-owl is often the easiest way to actually locate one roosting in a cavity.
Screech-owls share much of their range and habitat preferences with the owl species found in neighboring Kentucky, where similar mixed woodlands and suburban tree cover support comparable populations.
3. Great Horned Owl
The great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) is the largest and most powerful owl found across Indiana year-round, instantly recognizable by the two feathered tufts on its head that give the species its common name. Adults typically measure 18 to 25 inches long with a wingspan approaching four feet, and their deep, rhythmic hooting is one of the most familiar night sounds in rural and wooded suburban Indiana alike.
Few animals in the state are off the menu for this owl. Its diet includes rabbits, squirrels, skunks, and a wide range of birds, and great horned owls are one of the few predators willing to tackle prey as large as a great blue heron or as odorous as a skunk. They also take smaller birds and occasionally raid urban pigeon roosts in cities, and their nighttime hunting overlaps with the flight paths of many of the bat species active across Indiana after dusk.
Key Insight: Great horned owls build no nest of their own. Instead, they take over abandoned hawk, crow, or squirrel nests and often begin incubating eggs as early as January, weeks before most other Indiana birds start breeding season.
Because the species is so adaptable, it turns up in nearly identical habitat and numbers in states well beyond Indiana’s borders, including the owl populations documented in Virginia, where the same generalist hunting strategy keeps great horned owls common in both forest and farmland settings.
4. Snowy Owl
The snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) is the owl most Indiana birders hope to see and least often do, since this Arctic tundra breeder only reaches the state during irregular winter irruptions when lemming populations crash far to the north. When snowy owls do arrive, they favor open, treeless landscapes that mimic their home tundra, including large agricultural fields, lakeshores along Lake Michigan, and even airport runways.
Adults are mostly white, though young birds and females carry heavier dark barring across the back and wings. Bright yellow eyes and a rounded, almost neckless head make the species hard to confuse with anything else on an Indiana Christmas Bird Count. Unlike most owls covered here, snowy owls are active during daylight, a holdover from summers spent hunting under the Arctic’s round-the-clock sun.
Important Note: Snowy owl sightings in Indiana vary enormously from year to year and depend entirely on lemming and vole cycles hundreds of miles away. A winter with several reports doesn’t guarantee the next winter will bring any at all.
Northern states along the Great Lakes and prairie regions tend to see the same irruptive pattern, and birders comparing notes with the owl species reported in Minnesota or the owls found across Wisconsin will often find the timing of snowy owl arrivals lines up closely with Indiana’s own irruption years.
5. Barred Owl
The barred owl (Strix varia) is the round-headed, dark-eyed owl of Indiana’s mature forests and river bottoms, easily separated from the state’s other large owls by its lack of ear tufts and its brown-and-white barred plumage. Its call is one of the most memorable sounds in the woods, a rhythmic series often rendered as asking who cooks for you, who cooks for you all.
Unlike the wide-ranging great horned owl, barred owls tend to be homebodies once established in a territory, sticking close to a preferred patch of bottomland hardwoods or mixed forest near water for years at a stretch. They hunt from a perch rather than in open flight, dropping down on mice, voles, small rabbits, and even crayfish and frogs pulled from shallow streams.
| Feature | Barred Owl | Great Horned Owl |
|---|---|---|
| Ear tufts | None | Prominent |
| Eye color | Dark brown/black | Yellow |
| Preferred habitat | Mature forest, wetlands | Mixed forest, farmland edges |
Barred owl range extends well south of Indiana into bottomland forests shared with the owl species documented in Louisiana, where the same dense, water-adjacent woodlands provide near-identical hunting and nesting conditions.
6. Long-eared Owl
The long-eared owl (Asio otus) is one of the more secretive and least frequently reported types of owls in Indiana, showing up mainly as an uncommon winter visitor rather than a breeding resident. Slim-bodied with long, close-set ear tufts, it looks almost cat-like when alert and can compress its body into a tall, thin silhouette that blends remarkably well into dense conifer branches.
Long-eared owls are highly social in winter compared to most owl species, often roosting communally in small groups of evergreen trees where several birds share the same dense stand night after night. During the day they sit motionless close to the trunk, relying almost entirely on camouflage and stillness rather than flight to avoid detection.
Pro Tip: Check dense stands of pine or cedar near open fields in winter, and look for whitewash droppings and pellets on the ground beneath the trees. These signs often reveal a roost site long before the owls themselves are visible.
Because the species depends on a patchwork of open hunting ground next to dense conifer roosts, sightings cluster in similar habitat to what’s reported among the owl species found in Maine, another state where long-eared owls persist mainly as scattered, hard-to-find winter residents.
7. Short-eared Owl
The short-eared owl (Asio flammeus) breaks most of the rules people associate with owls, since it hunts in open daylight and roosts on the ground rather than in trees. This grassland specialist favors large expanses of prairie, reclaimed strip-mine grasslands, and airport margins, habitat that has grown scarcer across Indiana as row-crop agriculture has replaced open pasture.
In flight, short-eared owls have a distinctive, buoyant, almost moth-like wingbeat as they course low over grass tussocks searching for voles. Mottled brown and buff plumage with dark patches near the wingtips helps distinguish this species from the long-eared owl, along with its noticeably shorter, barely visible ear tufts.
- Most active at dawn and dusk, though it will hunt in full daylight when food is scarce
- Nests directly on the ground in dense grass, unlike every other owl on this list
- Populations track vole abundance closely, so numbers can swing sharply from year to year
Grassland loss has made this species a conservation priority across much of its Midwestern range, a pattern mirrored in the open-country habitat relied on by the owl species recorded in Kansas, where large tracts of native prairie still support more stable short-eared owl numbers than Indiana’s fragmented grasslands.
8. Northern Saw-whet Owl
The northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) is the smallest owl regularly found in Indiana, barely larger than a robin and easily overlooked despite showing up in numbers during fall migration. It has no ear tufts, a disproportionately large round head, and a facial disk that gives it a permanently surprised expression.
Its call, a monotonous series of whistled toots repeated several times a second, carries a long way on still nights but is easy to mistake for a mechanical sound, such as a truck backing up. Saw-whets favor dense stands of young conifers for daytime roosting, often perched just a few feet off the ground where they sit remarkably still even when approached closely.
Key Insight: Bird banding stations across the Midwest capture and release far more saw-whet owls each autumn than daytime birders ever spot in the wild, revealing just how many pass through Indiana largely undetected.
Fall migration routes bring saw-whets through the same Great Lakes corridor used by birders tracking the owl species passing through New York, another state where saw-whet banding programs have documented substantial nocturnal movement each October and November.
Across all eight species, the types of owls in Indiana share one trait: most people hear them long before they ever see one. Learning each call and preferred habitat, from the barn owl’s raspy hiss over open pasture to the saw-whet’s tooting from a dense pine stand, turns an ordinary evening walk into a genuine chance at spotting one of the state’s most overlooked predators. For a broader look at how these species compare to owls found throughout North America, the general guide to owl species offers useful context on field marks and behavior that apply well beyond Indiana’s borders.