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Great Gray Owl
Great Gray Owl
Names
Common Name: Great Gray Owl
Scientific Name: Strix nebulosa
Appearance
Very large with dappled gray feathers and a large facial disk.
Behavior
Large, silent, and strong

Great Gray Owls (Strix nebulosa) are the largest species of owl by length. They are the only species of the genus Strix found in both Eastern and Western Hemispheres. In some areas it is called Phantom of the North.

Information[]

Description[]

Adults have a round head with no ear tufts and the largest facial disc of any raptor. Their body is light and dark grey, with a white collar below the beak, and yellow eyes. While its size is deceptive due to its fluffy feathers, it has the longest tail of any extant owl. The length ranges from 24 to 33 in (61 to 84 cm), averaging 28 in (72 cm) for females and 26 in (67 cm) for males. The wingspan can exceed 5 ft (152 cm), but averages 4 ft 8 in (142 cm) for females and 4 ft 7 in (140 cm) for males. The weight ranges from 1.28 to 4.19 lb (580 to 1,900 g), averaging 2.84 lb (1,290 g) for females and 2.2 lb (1,000 g) for males. They are outweighed by most owls in the Bubo genus. The adult's call is a series of deep, rhythmic "whoos", but they are normally silent. They are not as aggressive or territorial as other owls, making them difficult to find in the field. The exception is when protecting eggs or owlets, the female will be especially alert and aggressive.

Ecology[]

They are often found in dense coniferous forests of the taiga, near open areas such as meadows or bogs. They can sometimes be found in mixed oak woodlands. Despite mostly living in northern areas, it can survive in a few areas where summer temperatures exceed 100 °F (38 °C). Due to their large size, they have few natural predators. Their young can be preyed upon by black bears, various small carnivores, ravens, and Great Horned Owls. The only known predators for adult Great Grays is the Eurasian Eagle-Owl.

Diet[]

They are active mostly at night. They will wait, listen, and watch for prey, and then swoop down on it. With their excellent hearing, they can even do this through 2 feet of snow. They are the only species, save for a few other large Strix genus owls, that snow-plunge. They will also may fly low through open areas in search of prey. Their diet consists almost entirely of small rodents. What species depends on which is most abundant and available, including voles, pocket gophers, and lemmings. They are not known to scavenge or steal from other predators. In mated pairs, the male is the primary hunter who provides for the whole family, while the female guards and broods the eggs, nestlings, and flightless fledglings.

Reproduction[]

They do not build nests, instead using nests previously used by other large birds, like raptors. They will also nest in broken-topped trees or in large tree cavities. 2-5 eggs are laid. Incubation lasts 28-29 days. Young can leave the nest asfter 3-4 weeks, and fledging occurs after about 8 weeks. If food is scarce, they may not attempt to nest, but will also travel a fair distance to find food.

In captivity, they can live up to 40 years.

Significant Great Gray Owls[]

History[]

The Capture[]

On the border of Tyto and Ambala, Soren and Gylfie meet Twilight. It's his idea to head for the Great Ga'Hoole Tree.

The Journey[]

While distracted in The Beaks, Twilight sings about himself. Upon reaching the great tree, he's eager to fight, but also worried the band will be split up.

Elvan teaches the colliering chaw.

Twilight eventually gets placed in the Search-and-Rescue Chaw, and along with Digger, manages to find Eglantine.

The Rescue[]

Twilight wakes up Soren from a nightmare, and then snarks at Otulissa when she talks about her ancestry.

Twilight and the rest of the Band head into Silverveil and meet the Rogue Smith. Upon returning to the Great Tree, Twilight remembers he had a flint mop, and then he and the rest of the Band are given another flint mop for running off and must dig holes and bury pellets for Dewlap.

Twilight, the rest of the Band, Otulissa, and Eglantine all head to the Ambala-Tyto border to find the castle of the Pure Ones. Twilight carries a piece of mu metal as a shield against the effects of the flecks.

When the small gang of Pure Ones attack, Twilight faces off against Metal Beak with help from Ruby.

The Siege[]

Twilight dismisses Otulissa's talk about yarping pellets.

Elvan sides with Dewlap in a parliament about making the book Fleckasia and Other Disorders of the Gizzard forbidden.

To prevents themselves from being moon blinked, the Chaw of Chaws memorize different stories, with Twilight learning the War Cycle. When the owls of St. Aggie's tried to moon blink Twilight, he repeated the Battle of the Tigers, in which a Great Gray named Long Talon killed the leader of the tigers.

Otulissa is awoken by her pit guardian, an oafish Great Gray who liked to be called Cubby, but who she despised and insulted in her head, as she was not deceived by the parental facade he, like many pit guardians, wore. He escorts her to Skench and Spoorn.

Twilight starts a fight between the St. Aggie's owls and the Pure One spies. He also taunts Finny to distract her from attacking Soren.

On the way back to the great tree, Twilight, blending in with the surrounding fog, listens in on a pair of Pure One soldiers as the army masses on Cape Glaux.

A Great Gray named Huckmore instructs his unit (which includes the Band) on setting up milkberry vine snares. Twilight objects to such work. Huckmore then has to explain to Dewlap that using the vines in this way won't hurt the tree, and that the Pure Ones definitely wouldn't take care of the tree.

Twilight, Soren, Gylfie, and Octavia join the Burrowing Owls (Digger, Sylvana, Muriel) in digging a tunnel.

Twilight flies point in the last battle against the Pure One siege.

The Shattering[]

Twilight flew point as the Chaw of Chaws, the tracking chaw, the search-and-rescue chaw, the weather interpretation chaw, and the colliering chaw, headed for The Beaks.

Twilight and Elvan were among the many owls that fought the Nyra Annihilators with burning branches.

The Burning[]

When the Chaw of Chaws reach the Northern Kingdoms, Twilight is amazed by the Ice Dagger.

Twilight is especially excited when Moss takes them to Dark Fowl Island to learn how to fight with ice swords.

Gragg mentions that he hitched a ride to Dark Fowl Island on the back of a Great Gray friend of his who had once been a hireclaw, but since turned pirate.

As the Battle of Fire and Ice begins, Twilight drives a committee of vultures to perch atop the Great Horns. He then points them out to various hireclaws, who go yeep out of superstition.

As Kludd and Soren fight, Twilight rushes into the cave and splits Kludd's spine, killing him instantly. When Soren comments that Twilight didn't sing or taunt, Twilight replies that Kludd didn't deserve it.

The Hatchling[]

Coryn used his Firesight to discover that his father was not killed by Soren, as his mother told him, but by a Great Gray Owl.

The Outcast[]

Twilight and the rest of the Chaw of Chaws (except Otulissa) was present to witness the passing of Boron and Barran.

The First Collier[]

Twilight appeared in the prologue on a branch of the Tree with Gylfie and Digger. They were waiting while Soren and Coryn were in Ezylryb's hollow as he was dying.

When he gets the note from Joss, Grank remembers a strange event in his childhood with Siv and H'rath when a Great Gray claiming to be back from a southern conflict against a corrupt owl chieftain and the hagsfiend Mylotte, praised their flying skills. He invited the three of them to eat a lemming and declared the ice sword he wore bore the blood of a knight of Hengen. He insisted that H'rath, the king-to-be, eat first, but Grank had an episode of seeing with magic and saw a deadly snake coiled inside, ready to strike. Grank hardly remembers it, but he was told by H'rath and Siv that he flew into the air while shouting strange words at the snake, before it went yeep. The owl flew flown away during this and Grank debates if the Gray was perhaps in reality a hagsfiend in disguised.

A drunken Great Gray was among the owls present at a grog tree that Grank visited while seeking knowledge of the war between King H'rath and Lord Arrin and tumbled of the branch he was perching on, nearly whacking the collier in the head. Letting loose a huge belch, followed by a pellet, the Great Gray give a nod of apology to Grank, then fell straight on his beak presumably in a dead faint.

The Coming of Hoole[]

Alongside the rest of the Band and Otulissa, Twilight persuades Soren and Coryn to divulge the legends to them and listens as Soren and Coryn read the second chronicle of the legends.

When she was dispatched by Penryck and Arrin to follow and assassinate Pleek and Ygryk after they had found the son of Siv, the hagsfiend assassin Ullryck was accompanied by two burly Great Grays in service to Lord Arrin. Following the Great Horned lord and his Hagsfiend consort, Ullryck and her Great Gray companions set upon the weakened pair over the Bitter Sea, only to be attacked in turn by the nearby Kreeth - an old friend of Ygryk's - and two of her Puffowls. While Ullryck escaped death, it is unknown whether her underlings also survived or were killed by the monstrosities.

While at the retreat of the Glauxian Brothers, Siv, disguised as a gadfeather, inquired to the current status of Brother Berwyck, who she believed had made contact with her son and old friend Grank, directing her question to an elderly Great Gray brother, though it was Brother Cedric that answered.

A grog-drunk Great Gray was among the owls present at a grog tree that Siv approached as she gathered together an army to join her son in battle against the forces of Arrin's Army in the Beyond. Believing it to be a comet at first, the tipsy Great Gray was met with a slurred contradiction from a Great Horned. This Great Gray was among the owls that Siv swiftly sobered up and henceforth flew with the Queen to fight for Hoole. It is unknown if they survived.

To Be a King[]

The form of a Great Gray was one of the several species of owl Lutta morphed into during her first days after hatching and Ygryk and Lord Pleek. After the two abandoned their adoptive daughter due to an inability to understand her, Lutta came under the wing of Kreeth, who began teaching her to harness her morphing powers. In one of these lessons, Lutta, when given a selection of owl species to choose to fly as, ultimately chose to morph into a Great Gray, which her adoptive mother labeled as a good choice, calling the species "lovely fliers" as a result of their plumage.

A Great Gray mercenary who fought for Siv in the Battle of Beyond the Beyond was seen by Hoole, Phineas and the Snow Rose when the visited a grog tree under the aliases of gadfeathers. Deceived by the guises, the hireclaw inquired if they were from further north, then engaging in conversation with Alastair, noting that he had a cousin who had told him of how the Glacier Palace had been taken by hagsfiends under the command of an insane youngster.

During the Battle of Long Night, Arrin and his cousin, Lord Elgobad, were accompanied by their personal flanking captains, consisting of an immense Great Gray and a Snowy, though it is unknown to which of the traitorous lords the Great Gray was a vassal of. Accompanying their leader during the Battle, Arrin's party, including the Gray, continued to fly behind the shielding of the fyngrot until they were finally faced by Hoole, Strix Strumajen and Theo. Fighting with a long sword made from ice, the Great Gray continued to jab at random intervals with Arrin, the Snowy and Elgobad.

The Golden Tree[]

The River of Wind[]

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Exile[]

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The War of the Ember[]

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A Guide Book to the Great Tree[]

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Lost Tales of Ga'Hoole[]

Tavis and Cletus, living in the Desert of Kuneer, meet the treacherous Burrowing Owl Tarn. They soon uncover a Pure Ones plot, and finding themselves outnumbered, do their best to evacuate as many of their Burrowing Owl neighbors as possible.

The Rise of a Legend[]

When flying past a grog tree on the island of Dark Fowl, Lyze heard a drunken soldier boasting to Igor of how a Great Gray in service to the League of the Ice Talons had attack them with a hook and thorn alongside an fizblister-wielding Eagle Owl, only for the wind shift, allowing Igor's friend to slide beneath the two Bylyric followers.

At least one Great Gray was among the Ice Talon League commandos who, armed with fire claws loaded with stolen coals from Thora's forge, swooped on a Stormfast settlement in a merciless raid on unarmed civilians. In the subsequent battle, a male Great Gray Ice Talon was killed, and his body was sent falling to the earth, an ice scimitar besides him. This scimitar was later used by Lyze to fight.

During his time at the Kielian League Military Academy, Lyze, Moss and Thora met a Great Gray named Loki, who became one of his closest friends.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole[]

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Watch Wolf[]

Dozens of colliers and Rogue Smiths belonging to the Great Gray Owl species flock to the Sacred Ring of Volcanoes following the out of season She-Winds for the highest-grade coals that could be collected during such times and during his education under Twistling, Faolan meets owls from a variety of species, including Great Grays, as he learned the various characteristics that distinguished the separate owl species.

Trivia[]

  • The species name nebulosa is Latin for "misty" or "foggy".
  • The Great Gray Owl is the official bird of Manitoba, Canada.

Gallery[]


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