Spirit Guide of the Day is the Great Horned Owl! Whatever goals you have in sight, go for them with fearlessness and ferocity. Keep enthusiasm within yourself as you work on advancing your goals. You may need to request more respect from others towards yourself and, when communicating with others, pay more attention to their body language and vocal characteristics rather than simply what is said. Know that once you focus on what you want your goal to be, that you need to keep your focus and persistence by being courageous and undaunted by anything that may have held you back before. The Great Horned Owl guide can connect us with the skills of clairaudiance and extracting secrets. The incredible eyesight of this creature lends to it's metaphysical abilities to see through the veil of this world into the next. This ability aids in separating light from the darkness, reminding us that both light and dark can exist simultaneously, and that it is up to us to recognize them. Use this to see beneath the masks that others wear to their true face beneath. This also allows us to see the deeper meaning of lessons we must face. It is also believed this bird represents change and can appear to alert us that now is when growth and change are necessary. People who connect with Great Horned Owl are powerful people with a great sense of purpose. These individuals adapt easily and without complaint to changes in life while being unflinching when going for what they want in life. They carry themselves with an air of aloof dignity that may come across as arrogance at times. They posses great hearing and vision and are able to see past any hidden meanings others portray.

The Great Horned Owl, Bubo Virginianus, are large, thick-bodied owls sporting two prominent feathered tufts on their head. Broad, rounded wings match a rounded head and short bill with yellow or orange eyes on a tawny colored facial disc. This adaptive species is the most wide-spread ranging true owl, one of the families of owls, in the Americas and can be found from the subarctic North America, throughout the continent, and down into South America as far as Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. The Great Horned Owl prefer a wide range of habitats that enable them to live in such a wide range. This preference includes woodlands, orchards, swamps, agricultural areas with open grasslands, as well as wooden parks, pastures, suburban areas, and even cities. Their wide, short wings enable them to maneuver more easily among the trees of the forest. They are also covered in extremely soft feathers that help both to quiet their flight during a hunt and to insulate them against cold winter weather. A Great Horned Owl's eyes are specialized to open widely and contain many rods cells that enable them to see with excellent night vision. Although their eyes do not move in their sockets, they are able to rotate their heads more than 180 degrees to look in any direction. Hunting is aided by sensitive hearing. This hearing is amplified by the rounded facial disc of feathers that direct sound waves to their ears. The diet of a Great Horned Owl is also the most diverse of all the North American raptors. Prey can be nearly anything small enough to be taken down including small mammals such as mice, voles, rats, hares, and gophers to other birds and some larger animals such as skunks, porcupines, and marmots. Great Horned Owls will also dine on reptiles, insects, invertebrates, fish, and, at times, carrion. They will hunt during the day, but prefer nocturnal hunting. These birds will roost in trees, ledges, thick brush, and man-made structures. When responding to intruders, the Great Horned Owl will clap their bills, scream, hiss, and make other guttural noises before spreading their wings and striking with their feet if necessary. They have even been known to kill others of their own kind. Mated pairs of Great Horned Owls are monogamous and will loudly defend their territory with hooting, particularly in the winter before egg-laying and in the fall when their young will leave. When nesting, they will choose trees such as pine, juniper, or cottonwood and will often adopt nests from other species such as Red-tailed Hawks, herons, crows, or squirrels. A Great Horned Owl will line the nest with shreds of leaves, fur or feathers from prey, trampled pellets, bark, or downy feathers plucked form their own breast. The owl young are helpless when they hatch from their dull white eggs and have pink skin with white down on their upperparts. A typical clutch size will be between 1-4 eggs and take approximately 35 days to incubate and hatch. The female Great Horned Owl is usually larger than the male, but the male will have a large voice box and deeper voice. When tightened, their strong talons require a force of 28 pounds to open and they use this strong grip to sever the spine of large prey. American crows can sometimes be seen mobbing and forcing a Great Horned Owl away due to the danger of having their most dangerous predator nearby.