Habichtskauz
In the Carpathian mountains, they tend to favor almost exclusively beech-dominated forests, normally at elevations of above sea level. Forest characteristics of these beech-dominated woods showed that during forest management showed they need at least of woods to persist, with parts of the forests needing to be at least 45-60 years old. Carpathian Ural owls typically occur far from human habitations and woodland edge not surrounded by forest and typically avoid parts of the forest with steep slopes or with dense undergrowth. Carpathian birds often preferred areas with glades that bear gaps between the trees often around or so and usually with plentiful broken trees. Young, post-dispersal owls in the Carpathians birds show less strong habitat preferences and may utilized wooded corridors that often are connected to remaining ideal habitat areas. Reportedly the countries of Slovakia, Slovenia then Romania have the most extensive ideal habitat in the Carpathians and resultingly have the highest local densities of Ural owls, perhaps in all of Europe. Forest predominant in beech were also seemingly preferred by the reintroduced Ural owls in Bavarian Forest, again with old growth preferred with plentiful sun exposure. Bavarian owls occurred in areas that were also often rich in large mammals since their preference for access to parts of the forest with broken trees and openings often coincided. Further north in Latvia, forests inhabited were usually far older than was prevalent in the regional environment, usually with a preference for forest areas with trees at least 80 years old. Finnish populations apparently most often occur in spruce dominated forest, usually having discreetly segregated forest preferences apart from sympatric species of owls except for the boreal owl, which also preferred spruce areas but occurred more regularly when the dominant Ural owls are scarce. In the taiga of western Finland, it was found that biodiversity was consistently higher in the vicinity of Ural owl nests than outside these vicinities, rendering the Ural owl as perhaps a “keystone species” for the local ecosystem. Riverine forests with birch and poplar are often utilized in the taiga as well as spruce or fir forests (montane taiga) in the Ussuri river area. Generally in northern climes such as Finland and western Russia, wherein the Lapland area the Ural owl is likely to reach the northernmost part of its range, it is adaptive to Subarctic areas possibly up to the tree line but does not adapt as well as the great grey owl to areas of dwarf forest just south of the tundra, generally needing taller, more mature forests to the south of this.