When you think about the call of an owl, chances are you’re thinking of the great horned owl, but you may have heard others that didn’t sound familiar – like the Eastern screech owl, the barn owl, the snowy owl or the northern saw-whet which you might mistake for a truck backing up – but sometimes sounds like a saw being sharpened on a whetstone – hence the name.
And then there are barred owls that seem to be asking: Who cooks for you?
But calls aside, owls do have things in common. They’re amazing hunters – some catching prey in the dark.
"They’re skilled night hunters with this very eerie, quiet flight," says Charlottesville author Jennifer Ackerman. She spent the last three years working on her new book – What an Owl Knows. She concludes they are very wise.
"All birds are much more intelligent than we ever imagined. They have brains that are smaller than ours and organized differently, but they’re dense with neurons, so they’re capable of quite sophisticated mental processes."
With eyes locked in place, looking forward, they are masters of swiveling their heads.
"It is a myth that they can actually turn their head 360 degrees, but some species can turn them 3/4ths of the way around – 270 degrees, and that’s very impressive. It’s about three times the twisting capability that we humans possess."
They’re devoted parents – sometimes adopting orphaned chicks. At the Wildlife Center of Virginia, Ackerman learned about a disabled male great horned owl – Papa G-ho.
"He fostered 50 little great horned owl chicks, and he taught them how to be proper owls. Quite amazing. Never was he aggressive. He always took these chicks in, taught them how to eat, how to defend themselves."
That said, Ackerman is adamant — owls do not make good pets.
"It’s a terrible idea for the average person to have an owl as a pet, and in fact in the United States it’s illegal. Owls are wild creatures. They need to be living in the wild, and also they eat live prey, and they will shred everything in sight. They have very sharp talons."
Harry Potter and Hollywood made it seem otherwise, but a large cast of birds was needed to portray his pet.
"It turns out that Hedwig was actually played by seven or eight different male birds. Now male snowy owls are whiter than the female, and they’re also smaller, so they were easier to work with, and the people that were making the movies also liked the look of the very luminescent white owl against those wizardly black robes."
Ackerman says we have learned a lot from new technologies that allow us to spy on owls – infrared cameras and nest cams, satellite tracking devices and tiny audio recorders. We know, now, some ways to save owl populations that are in sharp decline. The author calls on Virginia to protect its old growth forests, suggests landowners let some of their property grow wild, and urges all of us to stop poisoning rodents.
"They eat the poisoned rodents, and the poisons get into their systems, and they wreak havoc," she explains.
The book is What an Owl Knows – the New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.
You can hear our full interview with the author here:
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
