Inter and Intraspecific Interactions Between Red-Tailed Hawks and Great Horned Owls in Central Ohio

Author Institution: Department of Anatomy, Wright State University; Department of Zoology, Ohio Weslyan UniversityInterspecific relationships between Red-tailed hawks and Great horned owls reveal distinct chronological activities that facilitate their inter-related nesting patterns. The hawk to owl ratio in the study area in 1976 was approximately 1.3 : 1. This proximal nesting may have had some effect upon Red-tailed Hawk success, in that Great Horned Owl predation on Red-tailed Hawks was related to their interspecific nesting distances. Although Great Horned Owls partially depend upon Redtailed Hawks for their nest sites (59%) and the diet of these two raptors do overlap in some prey selected, direct competition for these resources is minimized by the temporal segregation of their breeding chronologies and their daily activity patterns