Many people probably have a general idea of the owls breeding season rituals, even if this is just based on what we know about birds in general. This probably entails basic information about how birds nest and how long they sit on their eggs, but how many of us know how an owl gets pregnant and what exactly an owls reproductive system looks like? In this article I will be diving into the wonderful world of the owls reproductive system, and taking a look at what it means to be a male and a female owl ready to have some owlets!
So first of all let’s start with the basics of puberty (throwback eh?). Owls tend to hit what we know as puberty very fast, so fast that they can even be considered sexually mature at 5 months old! Amazing right? But most owls will vary between 5 months to two years of age to reach full sexual maturity. The male and the female owl have some similarities when it comes to their reproductive organs such as both having a cloaca. This is an opening which leads to the reproductive system because neither sex have external reproductive organs that are visible. The cloaca is basically one opening used for mating and excreting, unlike humans who have multiple openings (males have two, females have three).
So lets try and break it down a little for ease and begin with the females (ladies first right?). So, a female owls reproductive system consists of one ovary that connects to the oviduct, an oviduct is the tube which the egg passes through from the ovary.
Male owls have testes which enlarge during the breeding season so they can produce sperm and this sperm will be passed from the male cloaca to the females cloaca by putting their cloacas together and depositing the sperm across. Just like human reproduction, the sperm will then travel to the egg inside the female and fertilize it.
Once the egg is fertilised it will start off soft and small and eventually will grow bigger and will begin to harden enough so she can lay it. The egg hardens by being coated by several layers of albumen, which will become the egg white. Then another two coatings of the outer shell to harden it and protect the foetus growing inside.
The sperm can be stored inside the female for up to 100 days and will fertilise the eggs individually as they leave the ovary. The eggs are then laid and incubation will begin lasting around 30 days. The female will incubate the eggs mainly as she has an area of skin with less feathers and more blood vessels near the surface which is thinner and therefore allows more heat to escape to warm the eggs.
I hope this has been informative and has given a simple yet interesting insight into the biology of owls and how the wonders of breeding actually occurs. It can be quite confusing trying to understand how a hard egg is formed inside any bird and how this egg was fertilised so I hope this has explained this process, albeit briefly!