While mice are a staple of their diet, they are rather opportunistic hunters. The owl swoops and pounces upon its prey on the forest floor or in meadow grasses, and flies to a feeding perch near the nest to eat it. The great horned owl is also a year-round resident in Maine. Barred owls and great horned owls usually stay on their breeding grounds all year. These large owls, at the top of the food chain, have home ranges comprised of hundreds of acres, depending on the quality of the habitat.
All owls swallow small prey items whole.
They digest all but the bones and feathers or fur. Then they regurgitate these undigested parts in a hard pellet. Each pellet is the remains of a single prey item. When insects are eaten, the pellet is an accumulation of the exoskeletons of many individual insects. Roosting trees can be identified by the large number of pellets found on the ground beneath the tree.