10 Types of Owls in Pennsylvania: From Common Backyard Hunters to Rare Arctic Visitors
October 2, 2026
Most Pennsylvanians can name one owl without thinking twice, usually the deep hoot they hear from the woods at night. But the Commonwealth actually records ten types of owls in Pennsylvania across a given year, a mix of year-round residents, seasonal nesters, and a handful of Arctic wanderers that show up only when food runs short farther north.
Three species stick around every month of the year. Four more raise young here but head south when the weather turns. The rest are visitors, some reliable each winter and a couple so rare that a single confirmed sighting makes local birding news. This guide walks through all ten, with the identification details, habitat, and conservation status that separate a lucky backyard sighting from a genuine rarity.
| Owl | Pennsylvania Status | Approximate Length |
|---|---|---|
| Barn Owl | Year-round, but uncommon and declining | 13–15 in. |
| Barred Owl | Permanent resident | 16–25 in. |
| Eastern Screech Owl | Permanent resident | 7–10 in. |
| Great Horned Owl | Permanent resident | 18–25 in. |
| Long-eared Owl | Migratory nester | 13–16 in. |
| Northern Saw-whet Owl | Migratory nester | 7–8 in. |
| Short-eared Owl | Migratory nester, rare and declining | 13–17 in. |
| Snowy Owl | Irregular winter visitor | 20–27 in. |
| Great Gray Owl | Accidental, very rare | 24–33 in. |
| Northern Hawk Owl | Accidental, very rare | 14–17 in. |
1. Barn Owl
The barn owl (Tyto alba) belongs to its own separate branch of the owl family tree. Taxonomists divide owls into two families, Tytonidae—barn owls—and Strigidae, a family to which all other Pennsylvania owls belong. That split shows in its face: a pale, heart-shaped disk instead of the round face most other owls wear.
Diet-wise, the barn owl earns its keep on farms. Barn owls usually nest in barns, silos and hollow trees, and they eat small mammals, primarily voles, mice and shrews, with a single owl capable of eating two to three small rodents per day. That appetite makes them valuable, unpaid pest control for grain farmers and dairy operators across the southeastern and southcentral counties where most nests are found.
The species isn’t thriving, though. The decline is attributed to the loss of farmland and grassland habitats where the owls hunt for small mammals, and to the loss of secure nesting sites. The barn owl is classified as a near-threatened Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the 2015 State Wildlife Action Plan. Pennsylvania tracks the species closely enough that it also shows up on broader lists of at-risk animals in the state.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Barn Owl Conservation Initiative has run since 2005, and the numbers show slow, steady progress. Regional biologists confirmed 44 active barn owl nests in 2024, six of them new sites, bringing the total number of unique, confirmed nest sites to 262 since nest searches began in 2005.
Pro Tip: Landowners with grassland or farmland habitat can often attract nesting barn owls simply by installing an appropriately placed nest box, and plans are available through the Game Commission.
2. Barred Owl
The barred owl (Strix varia) is the classic “who-cooks-for-you” hooter of Pennsylvania’s mature forests and wooded swamps. It is a large bird of the deep woods, including forest swamps, riparian forests, and upland forest habitat, with a rounded head, no horns, and brown eyes—the only brown-eyed Pennsylvania owl besides the barn owl, since all others have yellow eyes.
Unlike the barn owl, the barred owl stays put all year. The barred owl is one of the species, along with the great horned owl and Eastern screech-owl, that is a permanent resident of Pennsylvania. It hunts from a perch rather than on the wing, dropping onto crayfish, small mammals, and amphibians in wet woodlands. Anyone curious about the frogs and salamanders that make up part of its diet can dig deeper into the frog species found across Pennsylvania.
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the raptor research and education center on the Kittatinny Ridge, keeps detailed profiles on the barred owl alongside the state’s other resident species. Its Pennsylvania owl pages cover identification and natural history for each species researchers regularly track in the region.
3. Eastern Screech Owl
The eastern screech owl (Megascops asio) is small enough to fit in a coffee mug and comes in two color morphs, gray and rufous, both of which show up in the same neighborhoods and sometimes the same nest box. Its call isn’t a screech at all but a descending, tremulous whinny, easy to mistake for a distant horse.
Like the barred and great horned owls, it’s a permanent resident. The Eastern screech-owl is one of the species that stays in Pennsylvania as a permanent resident year-round. It favors wooded suburbs, parks, and forest edges over deep wilderness, which is exactly why it’s one of the owls people are most likely to hear from their own backyard after dark.
Pine Creek Gorge, often called the “Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania,” is home to Eastern screech owls and northern saw-whet owls, with its deep wooded valleys providing prime nesting sites. Its diet leans heavily on large insects and small rodents, which is part of why it thrives around porch lights and gardens where beetles and moths concentrate; the same insect activity that draws in Pennsylvania’s firefly species each summer.
4. Great Horned Owl
The great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) is Pennsylvania’s heavyweight. It is a year-round resident and the most common owl in the state, ranking as the largest owl in Pennsylvania and the second largest in North America, measuring 18 to 25 inches long, weighing 50.7 to 65.7 ounces, with a wingspan of 35 to 55 inches.
Its range and adaptability are hard to match. It is a formidable and widespread bird of prey found throughout the Americas, from the Arctic tundra to tropical rainforests, known for large, ear-like tufts and bright yellow eyes, with mottled brown, gray, and white plumage that camouflages it against tree bark. That range flexibility extends to nesting, since it rarely builds its own. It often takes over nests built by other birds, such as hawks, crows, or even squirrels, rather than constructing its own.
As Pennsylvania’s top nighttime predator, the great horned owl fills a niche comparable to the state’s largest daytime raptors. Readers interested in that comparison can browse the eagle species that patrol Pennsylvania’s skies during daylight hours. For a broader look at how owls hunt and behave across the region, the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s owl overview covers the full lineup of the state’s nocturnal raptors.
5. Long-eared Owl
The long-eared owl (Asio otus) is one of Pennsylvania’s least-seen regulars, not because it’s rare exactly, but because it roosts in dense conifer thickets and rarely calls attention to itself outside the breeding season. Pennsylvania is home to great horned, barred, Eastern screech, barn, northern saw-whet, and long-eared owls among its established nesting species.
It fits the classic mold of the family that makes up most of the state’s owls. Strigidae, the “typical owls,” range from 4.4 pounds down to 1.4 ounces across 130 species worldwide, and share stocky bodies, short necks, large round heads, round facial disks, large eyes, hawk-like beaks, and rounded tails. The long-eared owl’s close-set ear tufts and slim build give it a startled, exclamation-point look that separates it from the bulkier great horned owl at a glance.
Winter brings communal roosts, sometimes several long-eared owls packed into the same dense pine or spruce stand. It nests in the state but migrates seasonally, following prey abundance more than a fixed calendar. Birders comparing regional populations often check how the species fares farther north, including in Maine’s owl community, where similar boreal-edge habitat supports it.
6. Northern Saw-whet Owl
The northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus) is Pennsylvania’s smallest regularly occurring owl, barely bigger than a robin and easy to overlook even when it’s sitting a few feet overhead. It’s one of the species that nests in Pennsylvania alongside the state’s other resident and migratory owls, though its tiny size and secretive habits keep sightings rare without deliberate searching.
Its call is a monotonous, repeated “toot,” often compared to a truck backing up, which is easier to hear than the bird itself is to spot. Fall migration brings the best chance at a close encounter, since researchers run banding stations across the state to track the species as it moves through. Audubon Pennsylvania has pointed to the Loyalsock State Forest as a strong location for finding the species during migration.
Population trends for migratory forest owls like this one often mirror patterns seen in neighboring states with similar northern hardwood and conifer mixes. Comparing notes with Minnesota’s owl species, where saw-whets are also a well-documented migrant, can help put Pennsylvania’s numbers in context.
7. Short-eared Owl
The short-eared owl (Asio flammeus) hunts differently from almost every other owl on this list: low, slow, and often in broad daylight over open grassland. It received its name from its diminutive “ear” tufts, and is about the size of a crow, 13 to 17 inches high, with a 38- to 44-inch wingspan.
Its coloring and flight pattern set it apart from its most common look-alike. Barn owls are very light in color, slender birds with a larger wingspan than short-eared owls and have a heart-shaped rather than round face, which are field marks that help distinguish it from the barn owl, a species whose hunting habitat is similar to that of short-eared owls. In the air, watch for the details experts use to confirm the species. Dark circles surround its eyes, and dark, crescent-shaped patches on the undersides of its wings, dark wingtips, and large buff-colored patches on the upper sides are very distinctive in flight.
Hearing matters as much as sight for this owl’s hunting style. The short-eared owl depends mainly on its sense of hearing to locate prey and can catch its quarry unseen under snow cover and grass, favoring open country such as reclaimed strip mines, uncut grassy fields, large meadows, airport margins, and marshes. That same open grassland is shared by many of the state’s grassland and meadow-dwelling finches, making these fields worth a slow scan at dusk.
Important Note: The short-eared owl appears on the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s endangered and threatened species pages, reflecting how scarce the large grassland habitat it needs has become across the state.
8. Snowy Owl
The snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) is the owl most people recognize even if they’ve never seen one in person, thanks to its near-total white plumage and Arctic origins. Its plumage is white barred with grayish-brown, its feet and legs are heavily feathered, and its full, soft feathering keeps the bird warm during periods of inactivity between winter hunting forays.
Pennsylvania sits well south of this species’ normal range, so any appearance here counts as a genuine event for local birders. Rare and irregular visitors to Pennsylvania, snowy owls show up mainly from November to January in response to food availability on the Arctic tundra. In years when lemming populations crash up north, more snowy owls push south looking for food, sometimes turning up at airports, farm fields, and lakeshores that resemble the open tundra they’re used to.
Because sightings are unpredictable year to year, tracking snowy owl movements has become something of a winter sport for serious birders. For a wider view of how this species compares to the rest of the world’s roughly 250 owl species, the broader guide to owl types is a useful next stop.
9. Great Gray Owl
The great gray owl (Strix nebulosa) is, by most measures, the largest owl in North America by length, even though its slim build and thick feathering make it lighter than it looks. It earns the “Great” in its name from a large head and the largest facial disk among birds of prey, along with a foot-long tail, though its actual body may be small since thick, fluffy feathers make it look bigger than it really is. It has a large round head, small yellow eyes, a hooked bill, a white collar just under the bill, and no ear tufts at all.
In Pennsylvania, this is as rare as owls get. Great gray owls are considered an accidental species in Pennsylvania, and according to records, they have not been spotted here for a long time. When they do wander this far south, it tends to happen during irruption years tied to prey shortages in the boreal forest. In winter 2017, the species was recorded in northern New York’s Robert Moses State Park and central Maine, and although rare, sightings have also occurred in Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah.
There have even been rare sightings of great gray owls in the northern part of the state, according to Bird Town Pennsylvania, which tracks owl activity statewide each winter. Anyone chasing this species should also check reports from owl populations in other states to understand just how far outside its normal range a Pennsylvania sighting really is.
Key Insight: Great gray owls do not migrate on a fixed schedule but may move around in some years looking for food, which is exactly the pattern behind Pennsylvania’s rare, irregular records.
10. Northern Hawk Owl
The northern hawk owl (Surnia ulula) rounds out the list as Pennsylvania’s other true accidental species, and its behavior is as unusual as its rarity. It gets “hawk” in its name because it looks hawk-like and hunts during the day, a habit that sets it apart from nearly every other nocturnal owl on this list.
Its markings are distinctive if a birder is lucky enough to see one. It has white faces outlined by thick black lines, yellow eyes and bill, brown backs and wings with white spots, white breasts and bellies with horizontal brown stripes, long brown tails with white horizontal lines, and fully feathered legs and feet. Northern hawk owls do not migrate and are mainly resident in the cold north across Canada and Alaska, which is exactly why a Pennsylvania record is so unusual.
Among Pennsylvania’s ten owl species, this one and the great gray owl are consistently ranked as the hardest to find. There are ten species of owl that one can see in Pennsylvania, albeit some of them are rare, and of those, the northern hawk owl and great gray owl are the most unlikely to be seen. Its wide-ranging diet even extends to small birds in open country, occasionally overlapping with the same fields where Pennsylvania’s pigeon and dove species forage.
Common Mistake: Because it hunts by day and perches conspicuously on treetops like a true hawk, this species is sometimes reported as a red-tailed hawk or kestrel before its owl-like face gives it away.
Ten species, four residency patterns, and a wide gap between the owls people hear every week and the ones that show up once in a decade: that’s the real story behind types of owls in Pennsylvania. Learning the year-round residents first, the barred, great horned, and screech owls, builds a foundation for recognizing the migratory nesters and eventually the rare winter and accidental visitors that make Pennsylvania birding genuinely unpredictable from one season to the next.