Winging through the darkened skies
Quick: what’s the most common bird of prey in the Bay Area?
No more than a handful of you answered that question correctly,
so if you said Western Screech Owl, you get the merit badge.
Owls are ubiquitous, but nevertheless poorly understood by most
folks, even those who spend quite a bit of time in nature.
Winging through the darkened skies
Quick: what’s the most common bird of prey in the Bay Area?
No more than a handful of you answered that question correctly, so if you said Western Screech Owl, you get the merit badge.
Owls are ubiquitous, but nevertheless poorly understood by most folks, even those who spend quite a bit of time in nature.
Aside from jays (there are no Blue Jays west of the plains states) there are probably no birds as frequently misidentified by local nature lovers as owls.
People often mention to me that a Screech Owl frequents the night skies around their home. As soon as they describe the bird – medium-sized and mostly white – I know they’re talking about a different animal entirely. Their description matches the Barn Owl perfectly.
Barn owls have a number of calls, but the one that gets noticed is a metallic screech that chills most listeners.
Barn owls are comfortable in the company of people – and that’s a good thing. Just about everywhere in our communities, from some dense trees across the street from the old Wheeler Hospital in Gilroy to the palms around the Dunne Park Clubhouse in Hollister there are Barn Owls.
Our towns would be unpleasant places without them.
A look at the ground under a barn-owl roost will reveal a scattering of owl pellets – felt-like objects about the size of a man’s thumb.
The pellets are the indigestible portions of the owl’s last meal. After catching and consuming prey, the fur, feathers and bones are held in the owl’s crop, to be regurgitated just before the owl’s next hunt.
The pellets can be teased apart to reveal what the owl was eating. Overwhelmingly, city-based barn owls are feeding on mice and rats. As I said, I wouldn’t care to imagine our towns without them.
Nocturnal animals are fascinating for a variety of reasons. They typically venture out as we are settling in, of course. That makes them a little mysterious and hard to observe.
But barn owls have been studied, and they display a marvelous range of adaptations that allow them to do what they do.
The owl’s feathers are soft, allowing for silent flight. There are even small teeth on the upper side of each bird’s flight feathers that interrupt air flow over the tops of their wings, lowering their stall speed in the same manner aeronautical engineers have devised for some high performance aircraft wings.
While owls’ vision is legendary, biologists have unleashed masked owls over fields, and they still locate mice by hearing alone. Barn owls’ ears are not set symmetrically on each side of their heads. Rather, one is higher than the other, allowing them to locate prey in both horizontal and vertical dimensions.
The other owl people occasionally mention is the “hoot owl.” No such creature.
Typically, the owl they describe is the great horned owl, sometimes referred to as the tiger of the night.
They’re larger than barn owls – they’ll even feed on barn owls occasionally. They’re also the only animal that regularly preys on skunks, something that anyone passing under one of their nests is likely to sense acutely.
Their throaty “whoo, whoo-whoo” is part of the sound track of countless commercials and movies whenever something spooky is called for.
Other owls call our region home. Burrowing owls are long-legged little birds that nest in abandoned ground squirrel holes. Long-eared owls and short-eared owls frequent very different habitats.
If you’re out just about dawn, and hear a repeated monotonous whistle that sounds like a child’s toy, you’re likely hearing northern Pygmy owl, a predator about as long as a sparrow.
And about that screech owl. As common as it is, it’s seldom seen. Listen for a series of accelerating notes, like the tempo of a ping pong ball dropped on a table. The bird’s mottled feathers allow it to blend in easily with the bark of a tree trunk. At eight-and-a-half inches long, from beak to the end of the tail, they’re not quite as big as Brewer’s blackbirds.
If you’re out at night, you are not likely to see one without trying, but you almost certainly have been seen.
