Is the owl an owl? What does the grass owl eat? Does it eat rats as a staple food? It helps reduce the number of rats.

Oriental owls belong to the family Carpinidae. There are 15 species in the world, which are endemic subspecies. Oriental grass owls are also known as monkey-faced eagles. But it is different from an owl. Grass owls are not owls.

The habitat of grass owls is mainly distributed in the western low-altitude plain, shallow mountain and hilly grasslands, bad terrain, orchards, cemeteries, wild battlefields, riverbeds and so on. Love activities in the uninhabited, high grass and thickets inlaid in the open environment, but also easy to interact with the shallow mountain agricultural environment.

According to the latest satellite transmitter study, grass owls live an average of about 182 meters from human activity areas and buildings. It is also the only resident bird that can nest on the ground among the recorded owls in Taiwan. During the day, they usually rest on the ground in the high grass, step on a cave-like space with their feet, hide in it, and come out at night to fly for food.

Because the owls nest on the ground, the breeding season of grass owls will avoid the rainy season, usually from October to March of the next year is courtship, spawning period, about 30-32 days to hold eggs, about 60 days after the nestling period to leave the nest, about two months after leaving the nest to learn hunting skills with the parent birds, so the young birds should be independent, at least more than half a year.

The main food habits are rodents, including ghost rats, moon rats, small yellow belly rats, red-backed rodents, etc., and also prey on small animals such as birds, hares, lizards, insects, bats and so on. From the cocoon feeding found in Zhongliao Mountain, Kaohsiung, more than 90% of the food sources of grass owls are rodents, indicating that grass owls are very effective natural enemies of rodents.