Prowling for Owls

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 22, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

In mid-March 2017, MH and I went on an "owl prowl" that took place at a Somerset County park. I have always been fascinated by owls because they are nocturnal and thus difficult to see or hear if you are a person who, like me, is more of sunshine lover.

But I have had my contact with owls. During the time I would have to rise long before sunrise to work an early shift I would hear great-horned owls, screech owls and the occasional barn and barred. Driving on a causeway in a marsh at dusk a short-earred owl flew over the car. A long-earred owl was reported at Central Park and I traveled a long way to find it, once a sympathetic birder told me which tree and another, sitting on a bench, pointed it out. 

Great Horned Owl (Photo by Joe Pescatore)

And then there was the snowy owl that came down to a NY pier one winter and just sat there, occasionally flying down to grab a ruddy duck (or so I was told; I didn't see it happen although we did travel to see the owl. We've seen other snowys during winter irruptions since then).

So I've seen almost all ones expected in NJ except for the smallest one, the saw-whet. But soon, I hope.

Here is some of what I wrote about the owl prowl:

Why are we so fascinated by owls?

Is it because some of them are very small and, with their round heads and big yellow eyes, look cute and cuddly?

Is it because we remember the Disney cartoon "The Sword in the Stone" where Merlin turns himself into a "wise, old owl" -- a Great Horned Owl -- to instruct the young, soon to be king Arthur?

Or perhaps we think of Hedwig, the Snowy Owl Harry Potter receives when he arrives at Hogwarts.

Or, maybe we are fascinated that these are birds of the darkness, which attracts and frightens us. After all, our human eyes lack the many additional rods owls have to see in the darkness and the asymmetrical hearing they use to hunt (depending on the species) mice, insects, rabbits, even other owls. (Great horned owls hunt skunks because the owls have no sense of smell.) There are many superstitions about owls, according to "Owls: A Wildlife Handbook" by Kim Long. For instance, the hooting of an owl is seen as a sign of impending death in some cultures.

Screech owl. As usual, someone had to point the bird out to us because
we'd never have found this ourselves. (RE Berg-Andersson)

There are 286 different types of owls around the world, from Iceland to the Falklands and across northern Europe and Russia down to Africa, but in the 950 acres that comprise the Somerset County (N.J.) Park Commission's Lord Sterling Park, which is adjacent to the federally run and much larger Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the most commonly seen owls are great horned (GHO), barred and eastern screech owls.

And that was why 30 or so owl enthusiasts were standing in the dark, shivering on a subfreezing night, under a nearly full moon, listening to park naturalist Ben Barkley or Mike Anderson, director of the New Jersey Audubon Scherman Hoffman sanctuary (also located in Somerset County), try to fool a screech owl into calling to us by imitating it. We were a split squad and I was part of the 15 or so in Barkley's contingent.

"Why are we fascinated by owls? The darkness, and the cuteness factor," Anderson said before we headed out. An owl is cute, "unless you mess with it."

As he prepares us inside for the Owl Prowl outside, Barkley's enthusiasm is infectious. When he was a high school junior, in 2010, he and Mike Anderson identified raptors during the Scherman Hoffman hawk watch on the platform of its education center. Less than a year on this job now, he can watch and listen for birds as he walks to work. "I am very lucky," he told me. (Yes.)

Before leading us into the dark he tested our owl knowledge. Who knew the 25-inch GHO is only 6 pounds? He showed amazing video of a Serbian long-earred owl (LEO) roost where at dusk 140 birds flew out of one tree. He amused many in the crowd by showing how "cute" some owls -- such as the 11-inch burrowing owl and the 6-inch elf owl -- can be.

Don't be fooled, however. Just like the turkey vulture and the redtailed hawk that hunt by day, owls are raptors. They have sharp claws for killing and sharp bills. They will eat prey whole and then regurgitate the inedible parts in a hard pellet. Some owls hunt by day -- snowy, northern hawk and great grey owls are birds of the northern tundra where they can hunt in many hours of daylight in summer. In winter, if food supplies are scarce, they will frequently fly south in what is known as an irruption. Many "night owls" hunt at dawn and at dusk, such as the barn and short-earred owls.

But they are, in the main, creatures of the darkness, emitting eerie sounds ranging from the "Hoo-Hoo-Hoo" of the GHO to the weird barks and "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" call of the barred to the hissing of the ghostly white barn to the whinnying and one-note tremolo of the 8-inch-long eastern screech.

Snowy owl we almost missed at Island Beach State Park
during a winter 'irruption.' (RE Berg-Andersson)

It was the screech Ben was trying to fool into calling, a process known as "pishing." But no owl was responding. Either it could see we were a group of humans (very possible with all those rods in its eyes) or the cold wind kept it at bay.

The West Observation Blind loomed over us. A pair of canada geese voiced their displeasure at our presence from nearby Branta Pond. Trails I've walked many times now looked ominous. Owls are very good at hiding themselves when they roost by day. They are even better hiding in plain sight at night.


As it turned out, the only owl MH and I saw that night was at dusk when a GHO (or perhaps a barred) hunting, likely to feed its owlets, flew over the road ahead of us when we were almost at Lord Sterling. But for me it was enough.

Birding in One Place

There are competitors who run marathons. Then there are those who sit to win.

New Jersey's World Series of Birding was Saturday, May 12, and unlike the baseball series this only lasts one day.

The Big Stay Team

At 7am on this particular Saturday, Scherman Hoffman sanctuary director Mike Anderson and his team were at their perch on the hawk watch observation platform high in the Bernardsville, N.J., hills. As the sun rose over the trees they had already seen or heard over 50 types of birds, an impressive total made more so if you know they had spent the night in sleeping bags on this platform, tallying what was out there starting at midnight.

The World Series of Birding is a charitable competition that began in Cape May in 1984 with the aim being to find as many birds as possible in a day and collecting money based on how much is pledged per bird. The winnings go towards bird habitat conservation.

Within the competition are divisions. Some of the most competitive teams run all day, from midnight to midnight. You need a reliable car and lot of people to see or hear a lot of birds in very short periods of time because these folks must zip from High Point in the northwest corner of the state to Cape May at the southern tip and as many places as they can hit in between. Before the day of competition they’ve already scouted locations and worked out their route for maximum birding in minimum time. NJ Audubon’s Cape May Observatory has such a marathon team, as does the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY, and many others from farther away. Many have corporate sponsorship. One winning NJ team included the famed Roger Tory Peterson, who helped them find 201 species in 24 hours, and that put the competition on the map.

But there are also teams that, while competitive, are not quite as gung-ho about it. One category is to bird only Cape May, which makes sense because the area has so many types of birds, both resident and passing through.

Some don’t even spend the whole day at it. Another small team out of Scherman Hoffman, led by Randy Little, left the sanctuary at 7 am. Their route took them through the Scherman Hoffman trails and into the neighboring Cross Estate, which is part of the federal Jockey Hollow park several miles away. By the time they got back at noon they had 61 birds and still weren’t done, heading out in two cars (after a brief rest back at the sanctuary) to bird parts of the nearby Great Swamp. They planned to finish at 3pm.

Black-throated green warbler, Scherman
Hoffman, May 12, 2012

Mike’s team was part of the Big Stay division, which means recording what you see and hear from one place, in this case the platform on the third floor of the visitor center.

Sitting is harder than you might think. You need a strong constitution, a comfortable chair and at least two people with good hearing as well as binoculars and scopes because one must verify the other’s findings for the birds to count. (What you really need is at least three so one can go to the bathroom while the others listen.) A sense of humor helps, too. It was cold that Friday night into Saturday morning, the platform was hard for sleeping and then the sun came out in a cloudless sky and the day got pretty hot, dry and breezy.

But there are payoffs.

The first bird recorded on the platform after midnight was a screech owl, the second a booming great horned owl. As the sun came up, the hungry migrants who needed to eat and rest from their journey north started hitting the trees and singing. The scarlet tanagers were easily scene; the Baltimore orioles (like the one pictured), black-throated blue warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ovenbirds and great-crested flycatchers among those easily heard.

Then came quieter ones like the Cape May warbler, its call weak but its face striking, that showed up on the spruce branch at eye level with the platform. Or the magnolia warbler in the tall holly, which was seen as those on the platform (which now included visitors drawn by the prospect of a good birding day) were joking about being fooled yet again by a house sparrow. It quickly became all business as binoculars were raised and the holly raked over until just the tiniest bit of movement revealed the bird, which showed for a millisecond before flying to a tree farther away. Still, it counted.

Common birds are counted, too - cardinal, titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird, robin. This is probably one of the few times a house finch at the feeder or a flock of flying grackles or a lone starling are celebrated.


Baltimore oriole, Scherman
Hoffman, May 12, 2012

 Meanwhile, Randy’s team had made its way along the driveway and down to the river, finding a number of warblers including a rare (for the sanctuary) Wilson’s warbler plus other birds, some of whom will breed in the sanctuary. Up on the platform, the sitting team could not hear the calls of the Wilson’s warbler or the Louisiana waterthrush that shows up every year along the river trail because the leafed-out trees blocked the sound. But they could see the common loon and great blue heron that flew over.

It is like the blind men and the elephant. The perspective is different depending on where you are.

As Randy’s team kept moving, trying to find as many birds as their limited time allowed, Mike’s team had tallied 73 birds by 1:15 pm, including broad-winged and sharp-shinned hawks. The team had long ago shed their warm jackets and had switched from finding migrant songbirds to the daytime raptors taking advantage of perfect weather conditions to fly north.

Had Mike and his team - which won the Big Stay division last year with 80 - been out in the field, driving hither and yon, they might not have been as relaxed as they were (when birds weren’t sighted, of course) or as Randy’s small group were in their limited travels. To these people it was a competition but it was also an excuse to get out of the house and do something they enjoy.

Some people let the competition - ticking off the birds on a list - take over. Some people are nice, some can be jerks. Some will be helpful and point out a bird you might‘ve otherwise missed, others will ignore you when you ask what they’ve seen figuring they worked for it and so should you.

What can get lost, even in the World Series of Birding, is the birds themselves. Imagine, 73 different types of birds seen or heard just by sitting in one place. It could be you in your backyard if you were lucky and had the time or the inclination to just sit and listen.

Not many do.

The totals, as of 1:15 pm, May 12, 2012

We should be grateful there are events like the World Series of Birding to remind us that habitat, in New Jersey and elsewhere, is being obliterated by housing “developments,” utility lines and golf courses. The money earned by the Series winners will help preserve what land is left for the birds.

When the winners were announced the next day neither Mike’s nor Randy’s team won their divisions. The most birds seen in New Jersey in 24 hours were 207 - 207! - by a marathon group that included Pete Dunne, who was with that previous winning group featuring Roger Tory Peterson that had found 201 species.

The Big Stay division winner, with 80 species, was a N.J. Audubon team out of Atlantic County, on the ocean just north of Cape May County and where the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as Brigintine, is located. Mike’s team ended up with 77.

So it goes.

Meanwhile, the birds continue their marathons north. The winners of this World Series get to create another generation for us to enjoy.

Up on the roof

I’d like to have a mansion on a steep hill, lots of woods around it, lots of hiking trails and plants and people to take care of them.

Since I don’t, the next best thing is to visit someone else’s.

So there I was, standing on the roof of the Hoffman part of New Jersey Audubon’s Scherman-Hoffman sanctuary in Bernardsville, looking for raptors last week.

There are many better-known places to look for hawks. Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania may be one of the most famous, and you can learn about some of the others through the website hawkcount.org .

I like Scherman-Hoffman’s hawk platform because it is not well known and is very easy to get to - a good thing for someone who can’t or won't climb. Just take the elevator to the third floor and walk up the ramp and out the door. (There are no chairs up there, so for a long visit bring your own.)

Last year was the first for the hawk watch because it was the first year the expanded Hoffman education center was opened after years of construction. The watch was staffed by an intern named Ben who showed knowledge of birds' field marks and calls beyond his young years. He is now at Cornell so this year we are on our own.

On the roof, alone on a sunny day, I was keeping my own checklist. Turkey vultures? Check. Black vultures? Yep, a circling kettle of nine. Redtail, sharp shinned and cooper’s hawks? Got’em.

Ospreys? A lot of them.

This is an inland location, so it is always a thrill when the osprey, also known as the sea eagle, flies over. Many did while I stood on the roof.

I always thought the osprey should’ve been the national bird instead of the bald eagle. It only eats fish and is a very good hunter, hovering over the water before diving. If successful it comes up, seems to shrug its shoulders to shake off the excess water and then flies to a tree for a well-deserved meal.

By contrast, the bald eagle will eat just about anything, dead or alive, and isn‘t a very good hunter. It is not above taking a fish away from another bird, usually the osprey.

Besides, ospreys look so cool up there in the blue with that head and wing pattern.

After 30 minutes of standing on the roof, I took myself for a hike around the sanctuary to stretch my legs.

I have found all sorts of birds at the center’s new Field Loop Trail Spur, from the small gold-crowned kinglet to the redtailed hawk. I was not disappointed this time - an accipiter zipping across the trail, into the trees and to a branch just along enough for me to identify it as a juvenile cooper’s hawk. Thanks!

A hawk was expected. What was not expected was the pair of turkeys that crossed the path just before the cooper’s made its appearance.

Benjamin Franklin also thought the bald eagle was a bad choice for representing the fledgling United States, for much the same reasons I do. In a letter he said the eagle is a “bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.”

By contrast he thought the wild turkey a “more respectable bird” and a “true original native of America” as well as a “bird of courage” that would “not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who would presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

I suspect Franklin might have been writing with tongue in cheek, although I have heard stories of turkeys attacking people and cars and I've read they are increasing in number, spreading out across New Jersey.

The two turkeys that crossed my path in Bernardsville saw me and rather than attack - perhaps because I was not wearing a red coat - ran into the woods and just stood there, thinking I couldn’t see them.

Turkeys are not known for being smart.

However, these were smart enough to be at Scherman-Hoffman. If they hang around on the sanctuary's property long enough they will avoid the fate of their forebears at Thanksgiving.