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From: Dan Victor <dvictor at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Calling Owls (Long) (fwd)
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Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 20:07:00 LCL
>From Phil Davis/Greenbelt, MD/PDavis at OAO.com:

Last week Barb Beck and I were discussing some of the vagaries of
noctural owl calling. I said I would post an article I wrote last
year related to this topic. It is fairly long - if you are not
interested in calling owls, this would be a good time to hit the
"delete" key.

This article originally appeared in Mar-Apr 1993 issue of The
Maryland Yellowthroat, the newsletter of the Maryland Ornithological
Society. It was basically a request to Maryland birders to provide
personal experience information about some of the "myths and
legends" of calling owls. The response from the Maryland birding
community was, well, underwhelming.

I would be very interested in hearing responses from fellow
"chatters", from around the county. I suspect this topic is of keen
interest to many of the people on BirdChat, so I suggest this become
an "open" discussion thread.

----------------------------------------------

CALLING ALL OWLS ... CALLING ALL OWLS

By Phil Davis

One of the best ways of developing birding skills is to
go on lots of field trips and learn from the expertise
of others. This technique is especially useful for
warblers, shorebirds and hawks; however most of us learn
about owls either totally on our own or from very
limited experiences imparted by our fellow birders.
Owling excursions tend to be few and far between,
usually conducted just for specific censuses, such as
Christmas, winter and May counts. Reading and research
tend to provide most of our personal knowledge base.

One of the traditional axioms of owling dictates that
when calling resident owls, either via imitation or with
tape recordings, always start with the smaller owls
(e.g, Donald S. Heintzelman, Guide to Owl Watching in
North America, 1984; or Claudia Wilds, Finding Birds in
the National Capital Area, 1992). In the mid-Atlantic
area, this means working up from Eastern Screech-owl, to
Barred Owl, finally to Great Horned Owl. Since larger
owls prey on smaller ones, belting out a Great Horned
Owl call in a meadow is reputed to cause all the other
owls to head for the hills.

I have long been suspicious of this theory because of
various personal unexplained field experiences. I
finally found a source who takes exception to this
hierarchical theory of owling. In his 1990 book, Owls,
Their Life and Behavior, Julio de la Torre talks at
length about his field experiences in Chapter 10,
"Finding Owls in the Field".

He says, "After thousands of hours of owl prowling over
the last twenty years, I am convinced it doesn't make
the slightest difference whether you start with a pygmy,
a spotted, a great horned or a screech owl call.
Traditional protocols emphasize the pecking order of
cannibalism among owls - great horneds eat barred owls,
barreds eat long-eared, long-eared eat screech; screech
owls don't regularly eat saw-whets but do beat the
daylights out of them. Therefore, the standard advice
goes, do a great horned hoot and you will terrify every
other owl in the neighborhood; play the barred owl and
all the long-eareds will cringe - and so on down the
line. In other words, at each stop you should start
with the tiniest owl and work gradually upward to the
biggest.

"For years, I faithfully followed this code until the
owls taught me differently. Screech owls readily and
vigorously mob great horned owls and long-eared owls.
On a grueling, bitter February census of possible great
horned owl nests I made ten stops in what I thought were
choice chunks of Bubo habitat. I hooted most
convincingly - and pulled out ten very angry screech
owls. In a hemlock ravine bordering the Hudson River at
dusk in late November, a huge female great horned owl
flew directly at me in response to my imitation of a
male's mating call; at the same time a pair of long-
eared owls, yapping like Pomeranians, flew up the canyon
and drove my new girlfriend away. During an early fall
census of screech owls I had tallied a grand total of
twenty-four individuals in six separate groups, when
three long-eared owls - later ascertained to be a family
group - began calling and flying about. Nothing could
have surprised me more than the reaction of the screech
owls. Seven of them began flying in tight circles
around the bigger long-eared owls, landing, flying
again, and constantly calling. Surprisingly, many of
the calls were of the long trill variety, generally
associated with pair formation and nest defense. As for
the saw-whets, I have seen them repeatedly stare down
death by valiantly sallying forth against screech owls.

"With regard to calling owls in pecking order, I am
reminded of an incident. Some years ago a splendid
wooded glen was going begging in the Christmas Bird
Count. A friend of mine finally agreed to check it out
at night for owls. Prior to the occasion, I had given
him a tape of saw-whet owl calls. What prompted him to
play it, I'll never know, since saw-whets hardly ever
call in winter. But play it he did. Not far from my
friend, as it happened, a great horned owl was sitting,
waiting for supper. My tape was the menu: saw-whet owl
au jus! Bubo sailed out and dove at my friend full-
tilt, no doubt expecting him to produce a nice doe-eyed
little owl. Friend ducked, Bubo swooshed by, and a
great horned owl was added to his count.

"Thus, the word to owl prowlers is this: go from small
to big if you feel like it, but be forewarned that you
may get you head knocked off in the process."

De la Torre's experience is consistent with situations
I have encountered during counts and censuses. On one
Christmas Bird Count, I had a close-by Barred Owl remain
totally silent to Barred Owl calls until I switched "up"
to a Great Horned Owl call - prompting the Barred Owl to
immediately called out. I have also played a screech-
owl call in a hollow to which a pair of Great Horned
Owls answered - and a minute later they were joined by
a pair of screechers, all calling together!

The original purpose of this article was to solicit
anecdotes from Maryland owlers to further substantiate
the theory postulated by de la Torre. However, as I
stated in the opening paragraph, our collective base of
experience and knowledge of owling is probably more
limited than any other aspect of birding. Therefore, I
am opening up my request for any anecdotes on owling
techniques, specifically as related to Maryland and our
owls.

In addition to the owling "hierarchy" issue, I throw out
the following questions for comment: What times of the
year have you found to be most successful for different
owl species; what time of day (opps, I mean night); what
habitats; what weather conditions; is success better on
moonlit nights? What calls have you found to be most
successful? For example, with screechers how successful
is the whinny versus the tremolo call? For Barred Owls,
have single or multiple bird calls worked best for you.
If you, as some of us, are not blessed with throats and
vocal chords to allow us to do good vocal imitations,
which recordings have you found to be most successful?
Do you know where the recording was made (i.e., what
dialect was the owl using?) How much success you had
with squeaks and squeals to lure owls out of hiding?
Has anyone had success in getting long-eareds to respond
in Maryland in the wintertime? How about saw-whets in
the wintertime?

What nocturnal owling techniques do you use or have you
found to be effective; for example, Fred and Jane Fallon
play "leap frog" with a car to allow one of them to walk
the roads at night while listening for calling owls.
Tyler and Phillips (Owls by Day and Night, 1988)
recommend that two birders listen from about 50 feet
apart and use flashlights to triangulate, to counteract
the ventrilocal ability of many owls. They further
state that owls do not seem to associate a beam of light
with danger and therefore, one can observe them for some
time before the owl takes flight into the outer
darkness. This has been my experience, however Virginia
C. Holmgren, in her 1988 Owls in Folklore and Natural
History, admonishes that a flashlight "usually frightens
the owls away before you catch more than a glance".
Have you tried red fliters on lights with any success?

Have you had any experiences to substantiate the warning
not to wear fur hats (or alternatively to cover "bushy"
hairdos with a hat) to prevent being attacked by an owl,
as Holmgren recommends?

Please share your experiences on nocturnal owling. If
I receive enough responses to this request, I will
compile the results into an article. Is there any
interest in a Maryland Owlnight, similar to the Maryland
Gullday; if so, what would be the most strategic date?


Phil Davis
Wild Bird Center
6955-F Oakland Mills Road
Columbia, Maryland 21045

PDavis at OAO.com