{"id":14170,"date":"2020-11-20T17:46:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T22:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/?p=14170"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:11:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T03:11:47","slug":"owls-in-christmas-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/2020\/11\/owls-in-christmas-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"No, You’re Not Likely to Find Any Owls Hiding in Your Christmas Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

Most Christmas trees are decorated with sparkling lights and shiny ornaments. But on rare occasions, they also harbor a holiday surprise: wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New York City, workers moving the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree recently discovered a saw-whet owl<\/a> hanging out among the massive branches before it was eventually rescued and released back into the wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSaw-whet owls are well known to roost against the trunk of evergreen trees, which probably is what this individual was doing when the tree was cut down,\u201d said Christopher Moorman<\/a>, a professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moorman, whose research interests include avian ecology, added that a small population of saw-whet owls breed in the highest elevations of the Southern Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while many saw-whet owls will roost in evergreen trees during the winter, they primarily use Christmas tree farms as hunting grounds, according Jeff Owen, an Extension Forestry specialist at NC State who focuses on Christmas tree production.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOwls may temporarily roost in a tree,\u201d Owen said. \u201cBut most of the time, they\u2019re just flying over and hunting rodents and other small mammals in the fields.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an owl were to roost in a Christmas tree in the Southeast, it would likely be an Eastern screech owl, according to Moorman. The small owls often occur in dense patches of evergreens during the winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moorman added that most owls are nocturnal and try to conceal themselves by roosting in trees during the day. They usually fly away if disturbed by humans or other wildlife.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n

Most Christmas trees are decorated with sparkling lights and shiny ornaments. But on rare occasions, they also harbor a holiday surprise: wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New York City, workers moving the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree recently discovered a saw-whet owl<\/a> hanging out among the massive branches before it was eventually rescued and released back into the wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSaw-whet owls are well known to roost against the trunk of evergreen trees, which probably is what this individual was doing when the tree was cut down,\u201d said Christopher Moorman<\/a>, a professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moorman, whose research interests include avian ecology, added that a small population of saw-whet owls breed in the highest elevations of the Southern Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while many saw-whet owls will roost in evergreen trees during the winter, they primarily use Christmas tree farms as hunting grounds, according Jeff Owen, an Extension Forestry specialist at NC State who focuses on Christmas tree production.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOwls may temporarily roost in a tree,\u201d Owen said. \u201cBut most of the time, they\u2019re just flying over and hunting rodents and other small mammals in the fields.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an owl were to roost in a Christmas tree in the Southeast, it would likely be an Eastern screech owl, according to Moorman. The small owls often occur in dense patches of evergreens during the winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moorman added that most owls are nocturnal and try to conceal themselves by roosting in trees during the day. They usually fly away if disturbed by humans or other wildlife.<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although many owls roost in evergreen trees during the winter, they usually fly away when disturbed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"featured_media":14173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"caption\":\"The saw-whet owl is one of the smallest species of its kind in North America, with the average adult measuring only 20 centimeters in length and typically weighing just 75-105 grams. Photo by Megan Lorenz\/iStock\",\"displayCategoryID\":460,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111,102,3,460],"tags":[43,261,30,247],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-14170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fer-research","category-hidden-newswire","category-research-innovation","category-thought-leadership","tag-extension-and-outreach","tag-fer-research","tag-fisheries-wildlife-and-conservation-biology","tag-wildlife-management-and-conservation-biology"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":460,"name":"Thought Leadership","slug":"thought-leadership","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":460,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Our more than 200 faculty members are experts in their fields, conducting cutting-edge research to solve urgent challenges at the intersection of the environment, economy and society. Here you will find content highlighting their expertise on a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary issues ranging from the significant rise in forest fires, deforestation and flooding to the need for accelerated innovation to sustainably engineer bio-based materials.","parent":0,"count":89,"filter":"raw"},"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14170"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43116,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions\/43116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnr.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=14170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}