Now I’m not a ticker or a lister or one of those birders who will travel hundreds of miles to see the latest rarity. But I do notice when I get a new visitor to my yard and/or neighborhood.

The other morning as I was diligently proofing the Smoky Mountain News around 4:30 a.m., the soft, sonorous “hoo-huh-hoo hoooooooo hoo hoo” of a great- horned owl came wafting through the open kitchen window. The bird called off and on for a good 10 minutes or so. It’s one of those sounds that speaks to you of nature like the howl of a wolf or the call of a panther.

We’re no strangers to owls at our household. In fact for the last month or so we have had a regular twilight bat and owl ritual. After bath time and Izzy gets her jammies on, Mom, Dad and Izzy go out on the deck to watch for bats and call for owls. We usually have a couple of little brown bats and the occasional red bat patrolling the little hole in the woods we call our lawn. As twilight fades into night we call for owls. Dad does a pretty good rendition of a barred owl. The most common responders of late have been eastern screech owls — they will respond to almost any owl call, which seems a bit strange because both barred owls and great-horned owls will prey on screech owls given the chance.

I have been fortunate enough to have four of the five species of owl that commonly nest in Western North Carolina. Those range from the smallest — the northern saw-whet (2.5 to 4 ounces) to the largest — the great-horned (3 pounds.)

The one breeding owl missing is the barn owl. I had these screaming banshees behind my home in Louisiana when I was a kid. They regularly nested in a huge gnarled water oak next to the Episcopal church. They could raise quite a din during breeding season.

The chances of encountering a barn owl in my neighborhood are pretty slim as they like fields and other open areas. And regrettably chances are getting slimmer as barn owl populations decline across the country primarily due to urban sprawl and increased development. While the barn owl is on no federal list, it is listed as endangered or threatened in more than a half dozen states and is deemed “at risk” in Tennessee.

A couple of other owls that one might possibly encounter in the region are also on opposite ends of the spectrum. They are the short-eared owl and the long-eared owl.

Some range descriptions list the long-eared owl as a rare nester in the Southern Appalachians to North Carolina. But most records I have seen of this bird are from the winter. There was a stir in Raleigh back in 2003 when one flew into a window downtown.

When we talk about ears or horns on owls we are actually talking about tufts of feathers primarily used for mating displays. Owls’ ears are on the sides of the heads, much like ours. Most of the strictly nocturnal owls also have asymmetrical ears — one is higher than the other. The owl’s acute hearing allows it to pinpoint prey even on the darkest of nights.

There are some slight similarities in appearance with the great-horned and the long-eared owl. They are both brownish owls with ear tufts, however the great-horned is a much larger, stockier bird and its “horns” are set far apart on opposite sides of the head. The much slimmer and smaller long-eared owl has long “ears” set close together on the top of its head.

The short-eared owl has nearly non-existent tufts. This winter visitor is one of the more diurnal owls, often seen hunting harrier-like over open fields and marshes. Short-eared owls have been known to overwinter in Henderson County at the Super Sod farm along Hooper’s Lane.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@earthlink.net.)