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.

Avoiding Pepe Le Pew

According to the 2019 edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac (and it is old, first published in 1792), on Feb. 24 "Skunks mate now."

Never have three little words been so obnoxious.

This means for the last week of this month my windows will continue to be kept tightly shut because there will be a very good chance of stink during the night, either between two male skunks fighting over a female, or a female skunk trying to fight off a male.

The real Pepe le Pew (free photo courtesy of Pixabay/Wikipedia)

Skunks can stink up the area at all times of year, of course. That's how they defend themselves from predators. They use two anal glands that can shoot the noxious spray up to 12 feet away. I can remember being awakened one autumn pre-dawn by the howl of a cat followed by the familiar, pungent odor of a skunk. The cat's eyes would've been stung and the skunk would've skittered off on its short legs.

The common striped skunk, made famous by the Warner Brothers cartoon character Pepe Le Pew, is the one you’ll find in New Jersey although there are 11 species, nine of them in North America. Like the house cat Pepe frequently mistook for a potential mate, I do my best to avoid skunks.

Sometimes it isn't so easy. In the dark, skunks are very hard to see. When I used to walk the streets of my town in the dark pre-dawn hours to get the train to work, skunks would cross the road ahead of me or, in one memorable case, two baby skunks turned out to be on a lawn next to me as I sensed something nearby in the dark. I walked very slowly away so as not to scare them into spraying. If you don't threaten it, a skunk continues on its way.

Skunks are solitary creatures except during the winter, when several may den together, and in the breeding season that runs roughly from mid-February into March. This is also when you’ll see - or smell - the most road-killed skunks as these nocturnal critters cross roads to find a mate and will treat your fast-approaching car as one big predator to spray.

You might wonder, what is a skunk good for in the greater ecological scheme of things? Skunks will eat the insects that otherwise destroy your plants and lawn or nest in your house: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and wasps. They love grubs, so if you see deep holes in your lawn you can thank your local skunk. However, skunks, like raccoon and bear, will also eat pet food and garbage left outside.

(free photo courtesy of Pixabay)

That’s why skunks are becoming as common a N.J. sight as gray squirrels, and for the same reason: A well-fed skunk is a breeding skunk. After mating the young are born about two months later, with five to six, on average, to a litter. They will nurse in the den for about a month and a half.

If you presume a skunk has bred in February, the young are active by May, which is just in time for a parent great horned owl that bred in January and hatched its own young to start picking skunks off to feed them. Great horned owls are not put off by skunk smell because they can’t smell the spray.

When owl meets skunk only the smell remains in the morning.

Feast or Famine, Owls in Central Park

I am writing on the fifth day of the fifth month in the fifth year of this decade and the fifteenth year of the new century. May is not known for heat but today it is expected to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

That's summer weather.

It was a very cold winter, 2014-2015, and when winter finally eased its grip in April, with temperatures nearly seasonable or slightly above, it felt great. Then it would get cold again and I'd look at my bare garden beds and brown grass and wonder if spring would ever come, and with it the migrating birds.

Well, I worry no more.

First daffodil bouquet, 2015 (RE Berg-Andersson)

First, it got into the upper 60s and low 70s. My crocus, daffodils and grape hyacinths never looked so good. Every day I would come outside and find new signs that winter didn't kill off everything.

Then, for the last few days, it has felt like July, with warm and dry air. This was wonderful - winds from the south provide a tailwind for migrating birds heading north - until it got into the 80s. I am not a summer person. I do not rush for the shorts and flip-flops at the first sweat.

What I do is get my binoculars and start looking for birds. However, I am not finding them in the large numbers I usually would in early May.

I don't know why that is, exactly, but I have some guesses.

The same global warming-inspired atmospheric conditions that brought us much colder than normal temperatures for much of the winter delayed budding and bugs. Without plants and insects, birds won't stop to feed or breed. When the weather finally did warm, plants started to pop and insects started to swarm but the birds were miles away.

They made it north with great effort, flying at night when it is cooler and there are fewer predators, but in some cases strong southerly winds or a desire to make up for lost time caused these birds to overshoot my part of New Jersey. One day birds are reported in bulk in one area, the next they are gone or numbers are greatly reduced.

Black-throated green warbler (Margo D. Beller)

My backyard was a microcosm of that. I had at least one junco coming to my seed feeder. Juncos are winter birds and in my areas all the ones I see are males. They have to head north to claim territory for the female juncos, who winter farther south. I am still finding other winter birds on my morning walks, mainly white-throated sparrows and pine siskins. But I have yet to find warblers in great numbers - a northern parula here, a black-throated green there, a brief call of an ovenbird.

In short, feast or famine. We've had no rain since a massive storm that cut our rain deficit in half. So we have nothing, then a near-flood. The eastern U.S. gets too much rain, the west is in a continued drought. The temperature is either 20 degrees below the average or 20 degrees above. I can count on two hands the number of "normal" spring days we've had.

So I will blame climate change for this one and hope that somewhere along the line there is a cosmic re-balancing that will make spring feel like spring, summer take place in summer and winter cold that doesn't seem like forever.

Encounter With a Killer

In my search for this year's migrants birds I went to Central Park on May 2. Central Park is a huge urban park in the center of Manhattan island. It is impressive enough at ground level but for a tired and hungry bird heading north in spring it is an oasis in a desert.

The vast majority of people in Central Park could care less about birds. Central Park has been called "New York's backyard" and that is very true. Residents and tourists come to walk, jog, bike, sun themselves on the Sheep Meadow, use the ballfields or playgrounds. It is the reason most birders come to the park early in the morning, so they can hear the birds call above the din of humanity.

Harris' hawk (RE Berg-Andersson)

However, the day I was at the park I discovered  the annual "On a Wing" festival at Belvedere Castle hosted, in part, by the New York City chapter of the National Audubon Society and the Central Park Conservancy. Plenty of  bird tours and informational literature to be had as well as programs about plants and bats.

But what seemed to draw the biggest crowd was the exhibit called "Talons!" Master Falconer Lorrie Schumacher wowed the crowd when she opened a box and took out a female great horned owl.

There is something about owls. Perhaps it is because hunt from dusk to dawn and they aren't easily seen. The GHO's "whooooo" is distinctive and eerie. We speak of "Night Owls" and the GHO is one of the largest in this part of the world.

So when Schumacher pulled out "Big Mamma," the crowd went nuts, taking pictures as you would see at any celebrity sighting.

Great horned owl (RE Berg-Andersson)

Schumacher also pulled out a Saker falcon, which is found in Europe and Asia and is particularly popular with falconers, and a Harris' hawk, a buteo found in the desert southwest. But the owl, who swiveled her head almost completely around to look at everyone and at one point hunched into a defense posture and fluffed herself up when she spotted a leashed dog in the crowd, stole the show.

GHOs are beautiful killers, as this crowd of city residents and tourists learned up close and personal.

On Owls

The other day, on the New Jersey bird list, Susan Garretson Friedman mentioned finding a great horned owl when she was leaving her job running the bookstore at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary.

I write the blog for Scherman Hoffman, so when she mentioned seeing it from the "upper parking lot," I knew exactly where that was, and when she said she was joined by Mike Anderson, I knew she meant the sanctuary director.

GHO - Joe Pescatore, courtesy of Scherman Hoffman

"Our" great horned owl, she wrote - obviously a regular. The center closes around 5pm so it was twilight, allowing her to be able to see it and for Mike to follow the owl with his spotting scope. It turned out to be a male GHO, which flew to a female owl and they mated.

I was envious.

It got me thinking that at this time of year, when I used to leave my house at 5am to catch a train that would get me to work by 7am, I would hear owls calling - mainly GHOs and screech owls but occasionally barred owls ("who cooks for you? who cooks for you-all?") and barn owls.

GHOs are particularly active in January because they are mating. Susan's post was all the more interesting because I would've thought by now, in February, the owls would be on their nests (perhaps all our recent snow and ice delayed things).

I wrote about life "In the Dark" back on May 7, 2011.

Screech owl, Prime Hook, Del.  (R.E. Berg-Andersoon)

I remembered how one morning I stepped outside my front door at 4am to look at the stars before getting ready for work. I heard the distinct hooting of a GHO very close by. I walked to the driveway from my front door and there it was, a massive shape silhouetted in a nearby tree. Another GHO was calling from across the road, at the edge of the old Greystone property. Later, walking in town to the train station, another GHO called from a backyard tree.

I thought of that last night as I walked out the same front door, at 10pm this time, and listened for an owl. Nothing - no calls, no silhouette.

I came home from work once in the twilight to find a screech owl preening itself in one of my trees, and I watched it until it got too dark to see and it flew silently away.

My last owl encounter was very different. MH and I were at Island Beach State Park, and a snowy owl was sitting in the rays of the setting sun atop a dune. There have been a lot of snowy owls in New Jersey this winter, an "irruption" southward because these daytime-hunting owls couldn't find enough lemmings. For that same Scherman Hoffman blog I wrote about snowys, and how they have been seen as far south as Florida, according to one report.

I've also written about bad behavior toward owls, such as the photographer who, despite having a long lens on his camera, insisted on getting up close and personal with a pair of long-earred owls roosting at Great Swamp.

Snowy owl, Island Beach SP (RE Berg-Andersson)

My fascination with owls is no doubt fueled by the fact they are mainly nocturnal. I, like the birds I see more often, am diurnal. One forgets that life continues at night, too, even if I am not outside in it. When I encounter an owl, 99% of the time it is through my hearing, not sight. Owls can see in the dark and their hearing is 20 times better than mine, the better to hear the scurrying of rodents under 6 inches of packed snow and ice.

Hearing the owls in the deep dark of a cold January night was one of the few good things about getting up at that ungodly hour for six years and walking a mile to the train. As I write today, in my home office, the weak sun of a snow-covered and cold day barely warming me, I am wishing I was walking with the owls again.

Last night as I left the Center, I looked up and in the tree above the
upper parking lot, was our Great Horned Owl. I watched him for about 10
minutes, then he flew off, and I thought, caught another bird -- I heard
some squawk. Mike Anderson, who heard him too, was out in the upper
parking lot with the scope, and caught the actual situation, which was the
gentleman owl I was watching responding to the call of a female owl (which
I had heard) and doing what comes naturally. After that they flew off.
Pretty cool. - See more at: http://birding.aba.org/message.php?mesid=620327&MLID=NJ01&MLNM=New%20Jersey#sthash.a2UK6u6h.dpuf

Last night as I left the Center, I looked up and in the tree above the
upper parking lot, was our Great Horned Owl. I watched him for about 10
minutes, then he flew off, and I thought, caught another bird -- I heard
some squawk. Mike Anderson, who heard him too, was out in the upper
parking lot with the scope, and caught the actual situation, which was the
gentleman owl I was watching responding to the call of a female owl (which
I had heard) and doing what comes naturally. After that they flew off.
Pretty cool. - See more at: http://birding.aba.org/message.php?mesid=620327&MLID=NJ01&MLNM=New%20Jersey#sthash.a2UK6u6h.dpuf

Last night as I left the Center, I looked up and in the tree above the
upper parking lot, was our Great Horned Owl. I watched him for about 10
minutes, then he flew off, and I thought, caught another bird -- I heard
some squawk. Mike Anderson, who heard him too, was out in the upper
parking lot with the scope, and caught the actual situation, which was the
gentleman owl I was watching responding to the call of a female owl (which
I had heard) and doing what comes naturally. After that they flew off.
Pretty cool. - See more at: http://birding.aba.org/message.php?mesid=620327&MLID=NJ01&MLNM=New%20Jersey#sthash.a2UK6u6h.dpuf