The Big Day!

Every year in late January or early February, the country pauses to take in a spectacle like no other: Months of preparation, training, late nights and early mornings, tough competition, and a singular focus to survive. That’s right, it’s:

SUPERB OWL 2015!

Now the Superb Owl celebrations were originally a way for t.v. comedian Stephen Colbert to avoid the legal ire of the NFL by talking about the “big game” without permission last year (relevant part starts about 2min in). Now in good fun, National Audubon’s CEO David Yarnold got in on it to talk about some of the issues with the Barred Owl/Spotted Owl management in California.

Who manages you? Who manages you all!?

And it’s a pretty fun idea. You don’t need a great excuse to talk about owls, but this one is particularly entertaining. In fact, National Audubon continued with the Superb Owl theme this year with their Who’s Who Owl Photo Gallery.

So let’s talk about owls! We probably already know quite a bit- owls are some of the most popular types of birds because of their unique behaviors and adaptations. Injured owls that cannot be released into the wild are often used as educational resources for school kids- RBAS hosted Mary Ann Weber from Houston Audubon with her Great Horned Owl, Tskili, in 2013; and our friends at The Urban Interface have helped rehab some of these guys to get them back in flying shape.

By the way, there was a great interview on KAGS with The Urban Interface about some of the latest efforts and fundraisers they have going on to set up permanent facilities for bird rehab in the Brazos valley!

So what do we know about these birds? Well, we know that just about every feature on owls has one purpose: to kill! These are some of the best hunters the birding world has to offer. As primarily nocturnal hunters, owls’ eyes are disproportionally large compared to their skull size. These big eyes can gather more light, contain sensitive rod receptors, and have more efficient retina neural integration mechanisms than just about any other bird.

Look at the eye on that one! Wow!
From: http://floreo.com/2013/02/23/owls-are-flying-eyeballs/

To better triangulate the position that a noise is coming from, owls’ ears are slightly off set from one another! It’s a little bit of an oddity thinking about all of the other animals that use hearing to hunt, but it makes very good sense. There’s a great deal more info available on this HERE and from this online book [PDF warning].

Adapted from "Ecology and Conservation of Owls" Newton, Kavanagh, Olsen, and Taylor. 2002.

Owls can also fly in near silence. That’s a pretty unique adaptation. Think about Northern Cardinals or a flock of Common Grackles going by… you can hear them before you see them! That’s not of great utility to a hunter relying on stealth to get their dinner. Owls use a coupe of different mechanisms to reduce their auditory presence:

1) A soft, fluffy under belly helps dampen any sounds reflecting off of them

2) The trailing edge of flight feathers is lightly serrated, gently breaking up the large air vortex created by wings flapping into lots of little vortexes

3) The leading edge of the wings has a bristly edge, helping to break up the air passing over the wing

Good view of the leading and trailing edges.

By Kersti (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] via Wikimedia Commons

Alright, so what about locally? What kind of owls do we have in the Brazos Valley? We can usually depend on four different species of owls in this area: Barred, Eastern Screech, Great-horned, and Barn.

Barred

A common and widespread specie, Barred Owls typically like mature forests near water. Pete Dunne describes them as: “A big, imposing, barrel-shaped, somber-eyed owl that looks like it’s wearing a shabby stain-streaked coat with a closed fur collar.” That pretty much sums it up. Their call is a classic amongst birders: “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all!” If you head out around dawn or dusk to Lick Creek Park, you’re nearly certain to hear them chatting with one another.

Barred Owl in Lick Creek Park

Eastern Screech

Our smallest resident owl, these birds are surprisingly common if you know where (and when) to look. It said that there is a good likelihood of an Eastern Screech in any modest sized neighborhood woodlot. The RBAS Great Texas Birding Classic Team started our Big Sit off with an Eastern Screech in Brison Park last year! Heck, you can even put up a Screech Owl box and have them roost in your backyard. Despite their name, Eastern Screeches have an ethereal, trembling whistle or slightly nasal whinny. They are most vocal in the late winter and spring at dawn and dusk, so check out your local park or woodlot and have a listen. [I don't have a picture- sorry!]

Great Horned

This is the owl that no one likes. Well, no other animals like. An expression of “sleepy malice – or just plain malice”, Great Horneds are a tremendous killing machine. Their diet ranges from small mammals (mice, rabbits, skunks etc), insects, and other birds, like Osprey, Peregrine Falcons, and other owls! They are awesome in the truest sense of the word. That’s why if you hear a group of crows sounding agitated and swooping around a tree, they have probably found a roosting Great Horned! These birds are active at dawn and dusk, as well as overnight and sometimes in the day, and are found pretty much anywhere Red-tailed Hawks are found. I’ve usually encountered these out a little from town- just on the edge as you get into some open areas of the county.

Great Horned Owl

Barn

A dapper owl, Barns typically live out in the country where it can cruise the fields and flatlands looking for small mammals, amphibians, and insects. Although they like living in quiet (abandoned) structures, they are known to nest in backyard boxes made for them. Typically difficult to find, they can sometimes be easiest to see just by driving around the countryside. Barns will use the light from your headlights to spot rodents on the side of the road. Pretty clever! But that also puts them at risk for accidents. A scary, unnerving screech/yell/shriek, this isn’t the type of owl call you’ll really enjoy hearing. [I have a picture, but it's super extra blurry]

So while you’re enjoying that other competition today, remember to have a look (or listen) in the late evenings or early morning! You might just find one of our Superb Owl friends!