Twelve Owls

Introduction

• 1 • I f you are reading these words in the United States or Canada, there is an excellent chance that a wild owl is roosting or hunting or incubating eggs or brooding chicks less than ten miles from you at this very moment. If you are in Minnesota, chances are an owl is less than half that distance away from you. Of the twelve species of owls that can be found in the state, two are quite rare, four are primarily winter visitors, and another is declining , but the others are widespread year-round. Owls are hardly abundant, but they are widely distributed , living in large forests, small woodlots, open prairie , agricultural areas, small towns, and major metropolitan areas. Despite their ubiquity, owls are exceptionally secretive. I lived the first twenty-four years of my life without seeing a single one. But once I became a birder and learned how to look for them, I saw my first three species within a month. A Snowy Owl flew right above my husband and me as we strolled along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago during our Christmas break in 1975. Right after we returned to Michigan State University in early January, I spied a Great Horned Owl roosting in a popular campus woodlot. In the previous four years I had probably walked past this bird a dozen times without imagining such a magical creature could be right there. Two weeks later, some birders reported three Short-eared Owls on a farm field a couple of miles from the Michigan State campus. I stopped by several times over the next few days, and each time I easily found them roosting or hunting in the open. Some common species eluded me, keeping me from growing complacent despite my beginner’s luck. Several birders told me about an Eastern Screech-Owl that regularly roosted in a Wood Duck house, often poking its head out of the hole, along a particular trail in an arboretum . I checked dozens of times before I finally saw it. I expected to find screech owls at Picnic Point, a University of Wisconsin campus park that I visited almost daily before work when I lived in Madison. I consistently checked several nest boxes and a dozen woodpecker holes but never got a glimpse of one during five years of searching . Then, during the final week before we moved to Minnesota, a friend who had a tape player took me out Introduction 2 • Introduction one evening. We walked pretty much the same route I did every morning while he played screech-owl calls and found eighteen! I didn’t hear my first “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” until I had been birding for four years, and never got a glimpse of a Barred Owl until a birding buddy brought me to a nesting pair. But with practice, I became good at imitating Barred Owls and now have good luck calling them in at least once every spring. Many nights during the fall of 2010, a male Great Horned Owl hooted in my Duluth neighborhood, often perched atop my neighbor’s large radio antenna. A female started responding to him in late November. I watched them calling many times, but when I walked through the neighborhood in daytime, scanning every conifer, I never spotted them without the help of squawking crows. Every speckle in an owl’s plumage and every impulse in its brain help it to avoid detection. Cryptic colors and the ability to sit still for hours allow owls to hide in plain sight. Prey species survive by listening and looking out for danger, and in response, owls are designed to elude detection by the keenest eyes and ears, even as they close in for the kill. Their soft, dense feathers muffle sounds, and their flight feathers bear a stiff comb at the leading edge, breaking even the softest whoosh into dozens of even softer whooshes. Hidden behind their facial disks, owl ears are huge. Their hearing is about ten times more acute than a human’s. They can pick up high-pitched rodent squeaks as well as their own deep hoots. We intuitively grasp that owls owe their success as predators to stealth. But that’s just half the reason why an owl’s flight is silent. Their ears are located on the sides of their head; during flight, the ears are right next to their flapping wings. Silent, relatively slow flight enables an owl to...