I was looking this up when John Pogacnik posted about screech owls.
Laurel VanCamp's 1975 66-pg monograph "The Screech Owl: Its life history
and population ecology in northern Ohio" can be read online at
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/87043#/summary   .
Lots of information about this species in Ohio, concentrated on the
lands once occupied by the Great Black Swamp in Lucas, Wood, Sandusky,
and Ottawa counties, involving 3000+ banded and 4000+ observed over 30
years.
        There are oodles of interesting results, and a table on p. 44  reports
the relative numbers seen of gray- vs. red-morph plumages. Overall,
northern screech owls in the US tend to be gray, and southern owls tend
to be red --cold gray, warm red--and probably the owls in this study had
a higher percentage of gray ones than in southern Ohio. Maybe someone
can remind me of the work of the owl expert in the Cincinnati area who
captured and studied many owls years ago; perhaps he mentions the
percentages, but I don't have his name at my fingertips.
        VanCamp's work, coming as it does from years of work, has a lot of
value. It is detailed, and if you are in a hurry there is a Summary on
pp 60-61...but read it all if you have the time.
Bill Whan
Columbus

On 10/27/2015 12:50 AM, Casey Tucker wrote:
> As a follow-up to Don's post, I was driving home Sunday evening (10/25) when I accidentally hit and killed a red morph Eastern Screech Owl on State Route 13 between Mount Vernon and Utica in Knox County around 7:30 pm.
> It makes me wonder about the local abundance of red morph versus grey morph screech owls in this part of the state given the observation of at least two different red morph owls in relatively close proximity.
> Sorry this wasn't a more upbeat posting.  Hitting the owl was definitely a bummer for me , but at least I'm able to share some information here.
> Thanks,
> Casey Tucker
>
>> Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 04:06:11 +0000
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [Ohio-birds] "Saw-whet" owl a.k.a. Eastern Screech Owl, red morph photo links
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> http://s864.photobucket.com/user/Donald_Comis/library/?view=recent&page=1
>>
>> I posted my "saw-whet" owl photo on the Ohio Birding group on Facebook as well as on photobucket (link above) as suggested.  James Muller identified it as the Eastern Screech Owl, red morph.
>> It's funny because that was my first guess based on a quick search of a DNR booklet, ignoring my collection of field guides.  That steered me in the right direction by listing only common owls.  I knew the screech owl, the Great Horned Owl, and the barred owl were the three common ones and I have heard all three in our yard--and size made the screech the only choice of those three.
>> But when I sent the photo to a friend, she got me thinking saw-whet, connecting it to the recent post about a saw-whet  sighting.
>> Thanks for all the help--I learned a lot about screech owls and the red morph!
>> Don ComisApple Valley, Howard, Ohio (Knox County, about 7 miles from Mt. Vernon)

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