On Thu, 6 Mar 1997, Don Baccus wrote:

> >We played the Great Gray Owl tape to it. It looked straight
> >at us for about 30 seconds, and then, without uttering a sound, flew
> >quietly away in the other direction.
>
> I've heard that Great Gray Owls don't come in to tapes, unlike their other two Strix relatives
> here in North America. Is this true?
>
Don't know if they actually COME to tapes, but the first Great Gray I saw
responded by hooting. This owl was in the Okanogan Highlands to the east
of the Okanogan River in spring or early summer in an area where there
are confirmed breeding records. We played the tapes and it responded,
allowing us to locate it early one morning (~5:30 AM). This one was
perched about 30 feet in a tree. The major difficulty with detecting
them by sound is that they have such a soft, low hoot. Mike Smith could
not hear the owl until we were fairly close to it. (Oddly, he seemed to
be unable to hear in the low ranges as well as I could, but he could hear
better in the high range, even though he listened to more loud music.)

My hypothesis about the different responses is that the first owl was on its
territory in the breeding season, and the owl that flew away was a
juvenile or migrant in late summer that probably assumed it had stumbled
into another owls territory.

Kelly Cassidy
WA Coop. Fish&Wildlife Research Unit
Box 357980
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington, 98195
kelly at u.washington.edu