I couldn’t have said it better myself. I regularly see owls hunting around streetlights, mainly for insects brought in by the lights. They’re not particularly deterred by lights, and lights will in fact make it easier for them to target prey.
Great Horned Owls are the top predators in their environment, and I wouldn’t expect them to be scared off by much except a bigger owl. And there aren’t any in most of their range.
Just dropping in to say that in all my years, and I promise you, that’s a shitload o’ years, I’ve never seen an owl. Not one owl. I’ve canoed and slept in the boundary waters, I’ve camped in Wisconsin and Michigan and Illinois, I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors. I even took a class once that purported to teach you how to call owls. Oh, I can do that call, all right, but I’ve never seen an owl. I taught science for many years, and dissected a number of owl pellets, so I’ve seen their vomit. But I’ve never seen an owl. I’m jealous.
I’ve seen them and yes the big ones will go for cats, kittens and puppies.
We have a hawk in out neighborhood now, and you almost never see squirrels and rabbits anymore.
Sorry to hear it, CC. My best tips are:
Keep a lookout for scat, lots of thick white pasty feces and the aforementioned pellets. Pellets can look quite different from each other, depending on what the owls have been eating, and can break down quicker in wet weather. Owls can sit VERY still, and the plumicorns really do change their silhouette. If the weather is wet or cold, the owl may look bigger than you’d expect, as they can fluff up their plumage to stay warm and dry. Conversely, they may look even smaller. (I do not condone the following treatment of a captive owl. But it’s a good example 
)
Ask people! Park rangers, other birders, photographers - any time you’re out, ask if people happen to have seen any owls locally, and see if they can direct you. Some birding clubs log lists of sightings by species.
Think about what would make a perfect owl habitat. Know a big ground squirrel colony? Or somewhere you’ve seen lots of gophers? Look up at the treeline for hollows, broken branches, thick cover – where you might expect an owl to wait, hidden, to ambush its prey.
-Learn about your local species. Calls, mating season, common diet. Lots of owls will be searching for mates at the end of winter, which can make them more vocal. Once you know what to listen for, this could help you locate one.
Good luck!
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an owl in the wild, but that makes it all the more impressive that during Nuit Blanche (an overnight cultural festival here), out at the Biodome some folks from the Saint-Hyacinthe raptor centre bring in some of the owls they’ve rescued and show and discuss them. They are really cool and I go see them every year.
Owls are seriously my favourite. I would love to have one of the tiny adorable ones, if keeping owls as pets were remotely practical (sadly it isn’t).
I’ve seen 29 species of owls, and I’m sure dozens of Great Horned Owls, over the years. I’ve seen 8 species in the Bronx alone. It’s a matter of knowing where to look. Owls roost during the day in some fairly specific places. In deciduous woods you’ll often find them in pine groves or other coniferous trees with dense foliage, usually perched close to the trunk. It takes patience and some looking around, but they can be seen.
Barn Owls too are generally easy to see if you can find out where they’re roosting, often in barns, abandoned buildings, or under bridges.
If you have an Audubon Society around or other birdwatching club, they may have owling trips at night. They’ll also probably be able to tell you about day roosts.
A documentary on owl/cat predation: owl vs cat
No beautiful pea-green boat, however.
Well, not exactly predation. ‘Play’ I guess describes it better.
This is a Barn Owl, not a Great Horned Owl, and it is a falconry bird (it’s wearing jesses – those leather straps on its legs). This explains it being acclimated to the presence of the cat; I assume they share a household. Barnies are great mousers, better than cats, but without the size and raw power of their larger cousins.
While entertaining, I have a few problems with the creator of the video. First, I hope the cat is declawed. The idea of it making tiny cat claw punctures in that Barnie greatly troubles me, as cat claws are a primary vector for bacterial infections. Also, I worry if the falconer actually hunts with his owl. Given its acclimation to leaping attacks by predators, in a real hunting scenario in a wild area I think a bobcat, a fox, or even a moderately large feral domestic cat will make a swift lunch of the owl. Same might happen if the Barnie acts just that clueless in the presence of a Great Horned Owl, too.
Colibri, thanks for the kind remarks. Your advice, as always, is spot on – for viewing wild owls, a little knowledge plus patience and persistence gets it done. You certainly trump my species count, but right now I can walk a few dozen paces out my office door and interact with 5 species of owls. As I said before, I’m quite fortunate.
Uh, my pea-green boat comment was intended to indicate a certain…lack of seriousness. 
My limited looking around indicates those two are an Internet phenomenon. But I agree it seems pretty risky practice. I’ve also seen videos of parakeets playing on well-fed cats that give me the heebie-jeebies.
Oh, I understood that, I wasn’t criticizing, just expanding the point. No offense was intended. And the video does show some interesting similarities in predatory adaptations. Both cat and owl are active (as opposed to passive) predators, and both typically favor prey items in the same size range, that being mouse. The owl is a swoop-and-pounce predator, while the cat uses spring-and-pounce, and both rely on talons. Both depend upon the element of surprise, and both are equipped with characteristics and behaviors that can be generalized as ‘stealth’. Both also have physical modifications that enhance their night vision. Interesting parallels, yes?
I liked when the cat leap frogged over the owl so as not to hurt it, just surprise it.
You could always try Owl Exterminators.
Earlier GQ thread on Owls vs Cats.
Count me in as another who didn’t know some big owls can take small cats.
As to your question, aren’t birds in general highly territorial? That would mean that if you have one owl family nearby, you just have them to deal with and not other owls dropping by.
I can only tell you what we do in the Netherlands when we want to attract owls. We provide nesting places. Access to attics, hollow trees. You might do the opposite.
Some owls are very much creatures of habit and will roost in the same place day after day. There was a saw whet owl in a nearby Audubon sanctuary a couple of winters ago that roosted on the same branch day after day. It was an amazingly well-chosen perch – you actually had to walk out on a frozen pond to see it. (I assume that the birders who first located it did so by the “whitewash”.)
Screech owls are “easiest” to locate in the winter – they will often inhabit small hollows in trees often facing south or west so that they can hang out in the sun to warm up on cold days.
Great horned owls are generally shy and retiring (and also nocturnal). They’ll hang out in shady parts of pine trees and are pretty much invisible at any distance, even though they’re the size of toaster ovens.
Barred owls are a bit more conspicuous due to their white breasts, but can easily be mistaken for sunlight on a branch. You probably won’t see one unless you’re looking for it or it flies. They sometimes call during the day (“who cooks for you?”) which makes them easier to track down.
Short-eared owls are crepuscular and can sometimes be seen in the afternoon or dusk hunting in marshes. They like to perch on low tree branches or posts.
Snowy owls are easy to find in a good year. Just go to a wildlife refuge near a beach in the winter and look for the big white … Canon lenses of the photographers.
I used to see burrowing owls pretty frequently in the undeveloped areas in north San Jose and Santa Clara. Sadly they’re almost all gone now.
I was looking for red-tail hawks’ nests one winter near our house (a suburban area north of Dallas), when I found a likely candidate.
Imagine my surprise when a Great Horned Owl poked his head out.
Later, there were babies:
Both will also periodically hork up something disgusting on your carpet!
awww, owl babies!
True dat!
Wiki says they often use abandoned nests of the Common Buzzard. And big hollows in trees and abandoned attics. So in winter, remove those or close them off and you are less likely to have Great Horned Owls on your property.
By the way, it is a constant amazement for me to see how casually rich you people are in wildlife. In Holland we have a relative of the Great Horned Owl, we call it the OeHoe. They are very, very rare. It is front page news of a local paper when one shows up. One known nesting site has bird enthusiasts from all over the country making pelgrimages to look at the owl family with binoculars and cameras. At the place I work, conservationists know the exact whereabouts of all the twenty pairs of Oehoes in the province. When they show up in a quarry, it is seriously debated with the quarry’s owner if he should stop working that part of the quarry and be compensated for it. That is how we think of wildlife.
Contrast that with you. " Oh, a mountain lion always comes in and eats the cat food" . “My stray cats are picked off by the Great Horned Owl that sometimes drops by”. “How can I get rid of those pesky bears in my back yard? They use my kids play equipment”. As do the foxes on my trampoline. ?
Pure wealth, you guys. Enjoy it while you can.