Subject: Boreal, Screech & Barred Owls
Date: Nov 09 09:23:52 1998
From: "R.J. Cannings & M. Holm" - mholm at vip.net


Dear Birders:

The BCFO owling trip to Penticton was a successful outing on Saturday,
November 7. Twenty-seven people carpooled up the hill (organizers had
misunderstood over the phone my maximum of fifteen participants and set the
maximum at fifty!) to Rabbit Lake, tramped through 12 cm of fresh snow and
waited patiently until the resident BOREAL OWL showed up. This time it
responded after about 10 minutes with a single skiew call, then gave a
series of strange, whistled "mooo-a" calls and nasal screech. We had good
looks after it buzzed over our heads and landed in the tree behind us.
After walking back to the road past some hunters in their campers amazed to
see a huge gang of people go by in the middle of the night in the middle of
nowhere, we drove down to the Venner Meadows junction and called in a
BARRED OWL. For a finale we drove down "Horrendous Hill" into Irrigation
Creek and called up the resident WESTERN SCREECH-OWL pair, which again gave
us a demonstration of some non-standard calls. One gave a terrific
screech, then another (the female?) started a long series of soft
"ke-ke-doo" calls, interspersed with very few trills. The "ke-ke-doo" call
is on John Neville's Birds of the Okanagan CD, taped from the pair just
north of Willowbrook. Anybody know more about that call?
A nice aroural display finished off the night and we even got back to
Penticton before 0100.

Cheers,
Dick Cannings

cannings at vip.net
(250) 496-4019
1330 Debeck Road
S11, C96, RR1
Naramata, BC V0H 1N0