Snowy Owl sounds: song and calls

A Snowy Owl sounds like a hoarse, low krooh, krooh, krooh: two to six rough hoots in a flat, even series, sometimes ending in an emphatic aaoow. That is a breeding-season sound of the Arctic tundra, and most Americans never hear it. Snowy Owls that come south for the winter are usually silent, sitting for hours on a dune, a fence post or an airport field.

What the hoot sounds like

The male's territorial hoot is a short run of rough, low notes, usually written krooh, krooh, krooh, krooh, given in a flat, monotonous series of two to six. Some series end with a louder, drawn-out aaoow. It is coarser than most people expect from an owl, closer to a croak than a mellow hoot. Males hoot most in early spring while claiming ground on the tundra, and in the thin Arctic air the call carries more than three kilometers, possibly much farther.

Females sound similar but higher or more guttural, and they add single two-part notes, chirps and high screams like their own chicks' begging. Mature birds have up to fifteen documented calls, almost none of them heard south of Canada.

The other calls: barks, rattles and an alarm

Near the nest, Snowy Owls get noisy in ways that do not sound like an owl. The alarm is a loud, grating, hoarse keeea. A raspier bark, written rick, rick, rick, is nicknamed the watchman's rattle. Audubon adds a hoarse croak and a shrill whistle, and excited birds cluck, squeal, grunt, hiss and cackle. A threatened owl also makes a clapping sound with its bill, or possibly its tongue.

Chicks start with a soft, high begging call that becomes a wheezy scream by two weeks old. At about three weeks they leave the nest on foot, long before they fly well, and their shrill squeals may help the female find them.

When and where you hear it, and why you usually do not

Snowy Owls breed on open Arctic tundra, from just north of the tree line to the northernmost land, nesting in a bare scrape on a mound or ridge with a good view. Everything depends on lemmings: in a good lemming year a pair may lay as many as eleven eggs, and in poor years they may skip nesting. Away from the breeding grounds the owls are largely silent. Older accounts calling the species silent altogether were wrong, and a few winter calls have been recorded in the northern United States, but a quiet winter owl is the rule.

The regular winter range is southern Canada, from British Columbia to Labrador. In some winters, probably driven by prey numbers in the north, many owls push farther south in an irruption. The winter of 2011 to 2012 brought thousands into the United States, and 2013 to 2014 was bigger still, with the first Snowy Owls in Florida in decades. Strays have reached Texas, California and even Hawaii. In Missouri the owl is a rare winter visitor, usually from mid-November through February.

Wintering owls pick open, windswept ground with little cover: beaches and dunes, lakeshores, prairies, farm fields, coastal marshes and large airports. Logan International Airport in Massachusetts has one of the most dependable winter populations in the country. Snowy Owls hunt by day as well as by night; in one Alberta study, wintering birds were most active in early morning and late afternoon and sat perched for nearly all the rest of the daylight. This is one owl Warble players are more likely to see than hear: a silent white owl on a hay bale gives a phone nothing to listen to.

What it looks like

A big, bulky, round-headed white owl with yellow eyes and no ear tufts, about two feet long with a wingspan of four and a half to five feet. Females are larger than males. Young birds are heavily barred with black, females always keep some dark markings, and old males can be almost pure white, though some take nine or ten years to get there. Snowy Owls usually watch from a perch, then chase prey down in fast flight. In the Arctic they live mainly on lemmings; in winter they take rabbits, voles, muskrats, ducks and other birds.

Hedwig, the owl in the Harry Potter films, is a Snowy Owl, played on screen by males because they are whiter and smaller. The species is listed as Vulnerable, and recent data point to a decline with causes not well understood.

Birds that sound similar

• 
  Great Horned Owl

  Great Horned Owls hoot too, and mated pairs duet, the male deeper and the female higher. A Snowy Owl's rough, evenly spaced krooh notes belong to the Arctic spring; since Snowy Owls are largely silent in winter, a hooting owl in a US winter is unlikely to be one.

• 
  Barn Owl

  A pale owl screeching at night is far more likely a Barn Owl, whose main call is a raspy screech. Audubon notes that white owls seen elsewhere in North America are usually Barn Owls, and a wintering Snowy Owl is generally silent.

Where the Snowy Owl card lives

The Snowy Owl is not in the top 100 of any single state album, so it lives in the national album of all 800 birds, where it counts as uncommon. Catching one anywhere in the country adds it there.

Questions people ask

Written by the Warble team from the sources above. Updated October 14, 2026.