When threatened, it puffs its feathers to increase body size in an attempt to look bigger and frightening. Reproduction Breeding takes place in the spring, in four-month cycles, so two broods a year are possible in areas with long summers. Two to eleven eggs are laid at two to three day intervals. They are incubated from the day the first egg is laid, so they hatch at intervals. There is often such a difference in sizes that larger ones may eat the smaller as they hatch.
Incubation lasts for about a month.
The eyes of the young open in five days. The preferred food is mice, but they also eat all manner of small animals such as shrews, pack rats and ground squirrels as well as small reptiles and amphibians. The diet is almost exclusively rodents when available. Only when rodents are not available will they eat small birds. Miscellaneous Huge binocular eyes have great light-gathering power but have poor focusing ability at close range.