Great Grey Owl

Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 extant bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions (e.g. the Northern Hawk Owl). Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish. They are found in all regions of the Earth except Antarctica, most of Greenland and some remote islands. Though owls are typically solitary, the literary collective noun for a group of owls is a parliament. Living owls are divided into two families: the typical owls, Strigidae; and the barn-owls, Tytonidae.

In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator (an organism that is hunting) feeds on its prey (the organism that is attacked). Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption. Other categories of consumption are herbivory (eating parts of plants) and detritivory, the consumption of dead organic material (detritus). All these consumption categories fall under the rubric of consumer-resource systems. It can often be difficult to separate various types of feeding behaviors. For example, some parasitic species prey on a host organism and then lay their eggs on it for their offspring to feed on it while it continues to live or on its decaying corpse after it has died. The key characteristic of predation however is the predator's direct impact on the prey population. On the other hand, detritivores simply eat dead organic material arising from the decay of dead individuals and have no direct impact on the "donor" organism(s).

Selective pressures imposed on one another often leads to an evolutionary arms race between prey and predator, resulting in various antipredator adaptations.

The Great Grey Owl or Lapland Owl (Strix nebulosa) is a very large owl, distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. In some areas it is also called the Great Gray Ghost, Phantom of the north, Cinereous Owl, Spectral Owl, Lapland Owl, Spruce Owl, Bearded Owl and Sooty Owl.

Strix is a genus of owls. They belong to the typical owl family Strigidae, one of the two generally accepted living families of owls, with the other being the barn-owls (Tytonidae). Common names are earless owls or wood owls though they are not the only owls without ear tufts, and "wood owl" is also used as a more generic name for forest-living owls. Neotropical birds in the genus Ciccaba are sometimes included in Strix.

These are medium-sized to largish, robustly-built and powerful owls. They do not have ear tufts and most are highly nocturnal woodland birds. Most live on small mammals, birds and reptiles.

Note that although the genus Strix was established for the earless owls by Linnaeus in 1758, until the late 19th century many authors applied it to other owls – namely the Tyto barn-owls – in error.