Top Quotes: “What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds” — Jennifer Ackerman

“When we’re cranky, stubbom, uncooperative, we are “owly.””

“Researchers have found that their vocalizations follow complex rules that allow the birds to express not only their needs and desires but highly specific information about their individual identity, and their sex, size, weight, and state of mind. Some owls sing duets. Others duel with their voices. Owls can recognize one another by voice alone. Their faces are expressive, too. They may seem to wear the same bland meditative visage, imperturbable as the moon, but their appearance can change along with their feelings — a fascinating window on their minds, if you know how to read it.”

“Owls are known as “wolves of the sky” for more good reasons than ever. Fierce hunters, they take all kinds of prey, from mice and birds to opossums and small deer, and even other owls. But they also occasionally scavenge, everything from porcupines to crocodiles and Bowhead Whales. Elf Owls dine on scorpions — only after they remove the venomous stingers — and, like other owls, get most of the water they need from their prey. Stygian Owls, which prey primarily on birds, have figured out how to find a whole night’s feast in a single swoop. According to Brazilian ornithologist José Carlos Motta-Junior, the owls use the noises of gregarious group-roosting birds like Blue-Black Grassquits to zero in on them and then, one by one, take the whole assembly.”

“Scientists have parsed the unexpected ways a Great Gray Owl performs a stunning feat in winter — catching voles hidden deep beneath snow by sound alone. A new view of the way owls process sound has also yielded news: some of the sounds owls perceive are processed in the visual center of their brains, so they may actually get an optical picture of a sound — a mouse’s rustle flashing like a beacon in the forest dark. And here’s a discovery to boggle the mind: an owl’s brain uses math to pinpoint its prey.”

“Owls may be known for their nocturnal way of life, but only about a third of owl species hunt solely at night. Others hunt at dusk. Great Gray Owls are mainly nocturnal but hunt in the daytime during the breeding season, when they must feed their young. Other species, like Northern Hawk-Owls and Northern Pygmy Owls, hunt in the day all year round.”

“Owls are most closely related not to falcons or nightjars but to a group of day-active birds that includes toucans, trogons, hoopoes, hornbills, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and bee-eaters. Owls probably diverged from this sister group during the Paleocene, after most of the dinosaurs died off and small mammals diversified. Some of those little mammals took to night niches, and owls adapted, evolving a suite of traits to take advantage of the nocturnal feast.”

“Since their first appearance on the planet, about a hundred owl species have come and gone, leaving fossil traces of their existence, including Primoptynx, a peculiar owl that soared across Wyoming skies fifty-five million years ago and hunted more like a hawk than an owl, and the Andros Island Barn Owl, a full three feet tall, which terrorized Pleistocene mammals. One extinct owl that vanished from the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues relatively recently, in the eighteenth century, had a smaller brain than most present-day owls but a well-developed olfactory sense, suggesting it may have used its nose more for hunting and perhaps even scavenging.

Some 260 species of owls exist today, and that number is growing.”

“Much to the amazement of researchers, new owl species are still turning up, including an owl that stunned scientists when it was discovered high in the Andean mountains of northern Peru. The Long-whiskered Owlet, a tiny, bizarre owl — one of the rarest birds in the world — with long wispy facial whiskers and stubby wings, is so different from other owls that scientists put it in its own genus, Xenoglaux, which means “strange owl” in Greek. It sings a rapid song described as “low, gruff, muffled whOO or hurr notes” and is found only in high forests between two rivers in the Andes. In 2022, scientists discovered a new species of scops owl on the island of Principe, off the west coast of Africa, named Otus bikegila for the park ranger who was instrumental in bringing it to light. Because some owls live in isolated regions like these, in tropical rainforests and on mountains and islands where populations separated geographically can diverge genetically, the number of species may continue to climb.”

“Pygmy owls in Norway have been known to stockpile as many as a hundred items (mostly small mammals) in a single larder to get through harsh winters.”

“The facial disk in owls that hunt primarily by sound is outlined with a ruff, or ring of stiff interlocking feathers that capture sound waves and channel them toward the ears, like people cupping their hands around their ears. Feathers in the back of the disk direct high-pitched sounds toward the ears, so the owl hears less noise from its surroundings and can focus on prey cues. “The diversity of feathers on a Great Gray Owl’s facial disk is just phenomenal,” says Jim Duncan, an expert on the species. “Seven or eight different kinds. The ones you see are very loose and filamentous, and sound travels through them quite easily. And then there are these curved solid feathers that form the back of the facial disk and act like the parabolic reflector part of the disk. The curve probably reflects the optimal angle for sounds hitting the disk to be directed into the ear cavities.” Percy can even change the shape of the disk by using muscles at the base of the feathers, shifting from a resting state to the alertness of an active hunt. It’s remarkable to watch an owl do this, adjust its facial disk when it hears something interesting. It’s like the disk itself is a kind of aperture, an “eye,” that opens wide to let in more sound and bounce it toward the ears.”

“Having a narrow overall field of view has consequences. Stand near an owl, and it may bob and circle and weave its head from side to side, forward and back, up and down, sometimes torquing it until it’s nearly upside down. The bird is trying to get a good look at you.

That Percy’s eyes are fixed in a forward gaze means that the only way he can follow my movements is by swiveling his head. Fortunately, he’s good at that. While it’s a myth that owls can rotate their heads full circle from a starting point facing forward, some species, like Great Grays and barn owls, can turn their heads almost three quarters of the way around, 270 degrees — three times the twisting flexibility humans possess. Owls have exactly twice as many neck vertebrae as humans do, giving them that much more flexibility. Other birds have the same number of neck vertebrae and are capable of twisting 180 degrees or more to preen. But their necks are not buried in feathers like an owl’s is, so it’s easier to detect the bending and twisting as they “crane” to see behind them. That an owl’s neck can move swiftly and smoothly through those 270 degrees of rotation is due to some clever adaptations, a loose S shape that gives it flexibility, and a system of bones and blood vessels that minimizes disruption of blood flow through the neck to the eye and the brain when the head rotates.”

“Its pupils dilate even more if it hears a new noise — a link between sight and sound that enhances its hunting skills.

When neuroscientist Avinash Singh Bala stumbled on this insight some years ago, it was completely unexpected — and, it turns out, useful to our understanding of hearing in human babies. Bala was training barn owls to respond to different sounds for a study aimed at understanding how human brains process sound. While he was setting up the experiment, he noticed that the owls eyes would dilate in response to an oddball noise — a door slamming or something dropping on a desk. Later, he realized that humans, too, have this involuntary pupil response and that it could be used to measure hearing not just in owls but also in babies. Because babies can’t tell you what they hear, diagnosing hearing issues is challenging. The discovery that their pupils, like those of owls, respond to a new sound, including slight variations in the volume or content of a word like bah and pah, led to a new diagnostic test for hearing loss in infants. It’s a telling example of how basic owl science has boosted human medicine — and how an owl’s eyes and ears work together.”

“During the hummingbird’s breathtaking dive display to woo potential mates, the bird sings with its feathers — or, as he writes in his dissertation paper, “chirps with its tail.” In that paper, Clark demonstrates that the loud chirp the male hummingbird makes at the nadir of its dive, just when the bird is directly over the female, is not a vocalization as was previously believed but a curious burst of squeaky mechanical sound produced by an exquisitely timed high-speed flutter of its specialized tail feathers.”

“The hoot of an owl is one of the few birdcalls most people know. But a hoot is not just a hoot. There are greeting hoots and territorial hoots and emphatic hoots. And owls don’t just hoot. They shriek, yap, chitter, squeal, squawk, warble, and wail plaintively, most often in courtship songs — love songs made of odd and uncouth sounds generally unappreciated except by the ears for which they are intended. Some owls sing with the full power of their lungs; others coo softly. Some chirrup like a cricket. Some chuckle or roar with maniacal laughter. In breeding season, the male Mottled Wood Owl of India utters a blasting, shivery “laughing” call, chuhuawaarrr. The Sooty Owl is known for its strange sliding whistle, like a dropping bomb.”

“An owl I heard in the Pilliga Forest in Australia not only utters a canine wok, wok or wook, wook, but also growls, quietly at first, then more emphatically. It may utter a soft sneeze followed by an abrupt scream and a tremulous, peevish hoot. The toots, trills, and chitters of the Northern Pygmy Owl match its pint-size body. But the deep, husky voice of the tiny Flammulated Owl belies its diminutive stature. Here’s another way owls break rules. In general, body size for a bird dictates the pitch of its vocalizations. The bigger the bird, the lower its pitch. Smaller birds usually have higher, twittery voices. The tiny Flammulated Owl explodes these formulas. It slows the vibrations of its call by loosening the skin around its throat, creating a low-pitched, husky hoot more suited to a Great Horned Owl, says Brian Linkhart, who studies Flams. “It’s a big bird trapped in a small body.”

JR, an Eastern Screech Owl that lives at the International Owl Center, has a call that sounds exactly like a ringing phone. And when a real phone rings, he responds with his own ringing call, says Bloem.”

“During those early days when Bloem was trying to figure out how to communicate with her new owl, she hooted at Alice while standing close to her perch. That’s when Alice would smack her head with her bill. “I was a slow learner,” she says. “But finally, I tried leaning forward while hooting, and she looked at me with apparent surprise, like, ‘Duh! You finally figured it out!’ and never whacked me again. Apparently, bowing while hooting is how it’s done.””

“To her great delight, she discovered that owlets begin vocalizing in the egg, even before they hatch. “We have a supersensitive microphone less than four feet from where the eggs were laid,” she says, “and we were able to pick up the sounds of the owlets in the egg about two days before they hatched. They break into the air cell in their egg and start breathing air. That’s when they start vocalizing. You can actually hear the little chitters of the chicks in the egg.””

“She found that she could identify individual wild owls living in the woods around her by their territorial hoots, which were consistent for each bird and sufficiently distinct from one another to “fingerprint” individuals. What typically differs from one Great Horned Owl to the next is the number of notes per hoot and how they’re spaced. The owl she named Scarlett Owl’Hara (owl researchers seem to love puns) sang a doublet of notes in part of her hoot. Wheezy sang a triplet, and Ruby’s hoot rose and fell in pitch. Victor had a sexy vibrato.”

“I can see why these owls are known as “glaring gnomes.” They even glare from behind, or so it seems. On the back of the Northern Pygmy Owl’s head is a pair of dark, white-ringed feathered eyespots, “false eyes” that are quite convincing.”

“Only birds that lay in places hidden from view have white eggs — woodpeckers, bee-eaters, kingfishers, owls. The eggs are concealed, so there’s little reason to expend precious energy producing pigments for them.”

“Look at sibling chicks in the nests of most owl species, and you’ll marvel at the way they vary in size, sometimes so dramatically they appear to be different species (like the barn owls in that silo in Linville). Some chicks might already look like small adult owls, still downy but with the dark facial disk of adults and flight feathers already growing in, while others look like tiny balls of white downy fluff. Owls lay their eggs hours or days apart, and in most species, those eggs also hatch hours or days apart. It’s called “asynchronous hatching,” and it’s the way most owls ensure the survival of at least some offspring. This makes sense, given the unpredictable nature of their prey populations — voles, lemmings, and other small mammals. If prey is abundant, all the young will likely survive. But if food becomes scarce, the parents can’t feed all of the chicks. The first-hatched siblings — bigger, stronger, and better able to vigorously beg for food — will get most of the meat and have a chance of making it. The younger owlets may starve to death.

“It’s a brutal world for the chick that happens to be the last to hatch,” says Jim Duncan. (“’m glad I’m the middle child in my family,” he quips.) This may seem inefficient, even cruel, but it raises the chances that at least some nestlings will survive to healthy maturity. Staggering the hatching of chicks also limits the food demands at any given time because the nestlings vary in their stage of development. Finally, getting a chick out of the nest as fast as possible reduces the risk of a raiding predator taking the whole clutch.”

“Eastern Screech Owls in Texas bring live blind snakes to their nestlings, not just for food but perhaps to keep their nests tidy and sanitary as well. The chicks will eat some of the snakes, but most of the tiny (and seriously bizarre) serpents will live alongside the owlets in the nest debris and eat the parasitic fly and other insect larvae in decomposing pellets, fecal matter, and uneaten prey. Scientists have found that nestlings with live-in blind snakes grow 50 percent faster and experience lower mortality than broods lacking serpentine company.

A female Great Gray goes the screech owl one better, eating the feces and pellets of the young and then, a few times a day, flying off to regurgitate the mass. Now that’s a devoted mother.”

“There are instances of what looks like parental abandonment or neglect. A week or two into a recent nesting season, one of three Great Horned Owl chicks fell out of a nest in Charlo and landed on the ground. The chick died of exposure or starvation. No effort was made by the parents to feed the chick on the ground or get it back up to the nest. They just continued to feed the two young that remained in the nest.

“When I see things like that, it reminds me that a lot of this parental behavior is programmed,” says Mendelsohn. “The parents see the chicks in the nest, they respond and feed them, but it doesn’t go beyond that.” This makes sense from a genetics standpoint, she argues. “To carry on the population, an adult breeding owl has to produce only one offspring that survives to adulthood and breeds successfully. So in species that live for many years, like Great Horned Owls, it’s probably better not to risk trying to protect young that likely won’t survive.” Whether or not a parent will feed a “downed” chick probably has to do with its age. If a chick is older, with a better chance of making it, the parents are more likely to continue to feed and care for it.

Sometimes owl parents stand by during apparent atrocities perpetrated by their own chicks and do nothing to interfere. In his video Wings of Silence, a visual exploration of nine species of owls in Australia, filmmaker John Young shows a chilling scene in a hollow containing a barn owl nest: one owlet killing and eating its smaller and weaker sibling. It’s a gruesome sight, difficult”

“He did once see a Snowy Owl chick, the fifth born of five chicks, that was sick and weak and wouldn’t feed. The mother bird held the failing chick under her breast feathers, but after a while it fell out and died, and then she fed it to the other chicks.”

“If you want to see a spectacle of roosting Long-eared Owls — a true parliament — the best place in the world is the central square in Kikinda, a small town in northern Serbia near the Romanian border. It seems an unlikely spot for the planet’s largest gathering of any owl species. But each year from November to March, hundreds of Long-eared Owls roost each day in the trees at the center of town. Wander into the main square of Kikinda, with its Austro-Hungarian buildings painted salmon and yellow, turn your gaze up into the pine, juniper, spruce, lime, birch, and poplar trees lining the square by the Orthodox church, and there will be hundreds of pairs of these lovely black-and-orange eyes looking down at you, says Milan Ruzic. Look up into a single tree, and you’ll probably see more than twenty or thirty owls.

The Serbian ornithologist has been studying these birds and their massive roosts since 2006. That year, Ruzic and a small group of volunteers began a campaign to survey more than 400 villages and towns in northern Serbia in winter and were astounded to find large numbers of Long-eared Owls roosting in urban areas from Belgrade all the way to the Romanian border. They mapped as many of the roosts as they could find and counted the numbers of individual birds. “In sixty days of fieldwork, we counted twenty-four thousand Long-eared Owls in hundreds of different roosts,” says Ruzic. Over the next years, that number rose, and eventually, he and his team estimated that close to 30,000 birds were roosting in the region’s villages and towns. Ruzid’s record for most roosting Long-eared Owls in a single tree during this fieldwork: 145. And at one location on a single day: 743. “That was a world record then,” he says. “It still is today.””

“Long-eared Owls roost communally in other European countries, but not in the numbers they do in Serbia. In Germany and the Netherlands, the roosts hold around twenty-five birds, and in Hungary and Romania, as many as two hundred. There used to be big roosts in Slovakia and elsewhere, but when all the money came in to develop agriculture, the numbers of owls dropped. There used to be sizable roosts in the UK, too. One winter, David Lindo saw a roost of seventeen birds in West London, “but that was more than thirty years ago,” he says. “We rarely get more than four together these days.””

“Why the birds are here in Serbia in such great numbers has to do with agriculture, specifically with food supply for the owls and the agricultural methods that sustain it. The whole region of northern Serbia is agricultural, and farmers avoid rodenticides and use more old-fashioned methods of harvesting that leave plenty of grain on the ground. In a typical alfalfa field, you can find millions of rodents, which makes the area excellent hunting grounds for the owls, says Ruzic. He has calculated that Long-eared Owls throughout the region eat about thirty million rodents in a period of a few months. That’s good for the farmers, he says. But for a long time, they didn’t see it that way.

When David Lindo first observed the owls of Kikinda, he asked Ruzic why more people don’t know about them. Ruzic replied that he and his team had been spending their time researching the owls, their habitat requirements, what they feed on — “and also convincing the people that live there not to kill them.”

Back in 2007, Ruzic recalls, “a lot of Serbians believed superstitious things about the owls. ‘If there’s a Little Owl on the top of the house calling, somebody in the house will die, that sort of thing.” He found instances of people harassing the owls, cutting down trees to try to get rid of them, even shooting them. So he began a massive campaign to educate people through conversation and media, giving them facts and figures. He engaged villagers:

“Okay, so these owls are calling during the breeding season for two and a half months in your village. How many people died during that time?”

“Well, no one.”

“Okay. And for how long do you think the owls have been around?”

“Well, for at least twenty years.”

“So how come anyone is still alive? We should all be dead.”

In two or three years’ time, Ruzié could see positive change in communities around the region. “Today, if you try to walk in Kikinda, you’re stopped by dozens of people who want to show you the best tree in town with the biggest number of owls,” he says. “The local community has become really proud of what they have.” The main square of Kikinda has been declared a nature reserve to protect the owls’ habitat, the first ever urban protected area in Serbia. During Christmas and New Year’s, no decorations are allowed in the trees around the square — which is a big deal, says Ruzic, because those are the best places to display them. Anyone caught disturbing the owls during the festivities at Christmas can be fined up to €10,000. And the whole month of November is dedicated to owls. It’s called “Sovember,” after sova, the Serbian word for owl. Schoolchildren ages six to nineteen get involved writing poems, creating artwork, and making cookies. Kindergartners come in from villages around the town to see the owls and participate in educational programs dissecting pellets.

“To see the attitude change like that over the past ten years — it’s one of the things I will take with me when I leave this planet,” says David Lindo.

Ruzic is still working to educate people and make them more aware of the owls. There are still villages in the region where people walk around beneath the birds and never look up, he says. Not long ago, he took a group of children from a kindergarten out to count owls in a village. “A lady came over to ask what we were doing. ‘We’re counting owls,’ I told her. And she said, ‘I’ve never seen a live owl.’ And I said, ‘Okay, at this moment, there are three hundred twenty-five owls around your head.’””

““There’s no better place in the world to come and see an owl up close than here in Serbia,” says Ruzic. “Sometimes you get an owl sitting up in a tree almost within arm’s reach. They’re completely used to humans. And if you just stay around long enough in the daytime, you can actually see their faces change.” In his talks, Ruzié shows a panel of twelve photographs of the heads and faces of Long-eared Owls. from Kikinda. The owls are so wildly different in their appearance that audience members ask whether they’re different species, or at least subspecies. Ruzic answers that they’re just two or three different individuals in the same tree from the square. The photographer was sitting below them, pointing his camera up, catching them in different owl “moods.”

“When a Long-eared Owl is relaxed, its face is rounded, its eyes are closed, and its tufts are down,” he says. “That means, I’m kind of sleepy, I’m resting. If they hear a sound or something, their face goes a bit more upward and they lift their ear tufts a bit. But if they get really alerted, they go slim and look twice as tall as usual.”

“That’s the great thing about this roost,” says Lindo.

“It’s all the same species, but there are so many different looks to these owls. Some are puffed up. Some are thin looking and very alert with their ears erect. One or two look like David Bowie with one eye yellowish and one eye orange. They’ve all got character, and I just never tire of seeing them, never.”

It’s also possible to witness some fascinating behaviors. If a cat walks by or a human does something that disturbs some of the owls, they will stop their normal chittering to one another, says Ruzic, “and they’ll do this really funny alarm call. Then all of the owls start doing the same call. It’s like, ‘What’s going on here? What’s the trouble? Where’s it coming from?’”

Individual birds sit on the same tree, the same branch, the same little stretch of branch, for more than ninety days. “They have their really tiny, really favorite spot.””

“The winters are cold, and the winds are strong. The region is completely flat, and there are few trees, few forest roosts, especially after the broadleaf trees lose their leaves, so there aren’t many places for the owls to hide or find cover. Fortunately, the villages and towns have planted conifers like spruce, black pine, Scotch Pine, juniper, and cedar for decoration in and around their streets and squares. After the owls feast in the farm fields, they seek shelter in the wooded squares and parks. In Kikinda, for instance, “the owls are really smart about positioning themselves in the trees right up against the local primary school,” says Ruzic, which keeps them warm and helps preserve energy. Also, the goshawks and eagle owls that will hunt them down in other settings won’t come into the towns and villages.”

“In the United Kingdom, it’s legal to buy a pet owl if the bird is captive bred. You don’t need a license or any credentials. Moreover, owls bred in captivity can be sold without any regulation, and it’s a lucrative trade. A Snowy Owl can bring in about £250. In the wake of Harry Potter, so many people bought pet owls in the UK, only to dump them after realizing the cost and complexity of caring for them, that a special animal sanctuary opened to adopt the unwanted birds.

The “Harry Potter effect” was perhaps even more pronounced in the Far East. In 2017, researchers with the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group looked at the abundance of owls in the bird markets of Indonesia before and after Rowling’s world of wizardry appeared on the scene. In Java and Bali, hundreds of species of wild-caught birds have been offered up for sale as pets for generations, write the researchers. This is because birds in general symbolize accomplishment in Java. “Traditionally, in order to reach a full life, a man had to have a house (Wisma), a wife (Wanita), a horse (Turangga), a dagger (Curiga) and a bird (Kukila),” they write, “with the horse representing ease of communication and movement within society, the dagger representing status and power, and the bird all of nature, as well as the need for a hobby in a well-balanced life.” In the past, owls — known as Burung Hantu, “ghost birds” — were little in demand, but after the release of the Harry Potter books in Indonesia in the early 2000s, their popularity boomed.

In one market in the 1980s, 150,000 birds of 65 species were for sale, and not a single owl. These days the markets sell hundreds of owls, called “Burung Harry Potter.” In the larger bird markets in Jakarta and Bandung, up to 60 owls are for sale at any given time, including scops owls, barn owls, bay owls, wood owls, eagle owls, and fish owls. In US dollars in 2020, a scops owl would go for as little as $6, a Barred Eagle Owl for $90. People learn about how to care for them from online forums, blogs, websites, and Facebook groups with more than 35,000 members. Pet interest groups meet regularly in parks to show off their owls and exchange information.

Japan is the largest global importer of owls, accounting for more than 90 percent of the thousands of owl imports. This may have to do with “Kawaii,” Japan’s “cute culture,” which lately has focused on owls, with their big eyes and other humanlike facial characteristics.”

“When an owl chick hatches, it doesn’t instinctively know what it is. Imprinting on a member of its own species helps a baby bird learn and interpret species – specific behaviors and vocalizations so it can choose appropriate mates later in life. If an owlet imprints on a human, the owl will never be owl enough to survive in the wild. It’s easy for an owl to make the mistake. Our faces look owllike to them, just as their faces look humanlike to us. As Laura Erickson put it, “They respond to us the way we respond to them.” If a baby owl imprints on humans, it won’t fear them. But it won’t necessarily be friendly toward people either or welcome their contact. In fact, as Alice demonstrates, human-imprinted owls can be territorial and aggressive with people, just as they would be with other owls.”

“Owls have been known to attack people when they feel threatened or while trying to protect their nests. In 2015, a Barred Owl defending its territory in Salem, Oregon, attacked joggers so often that it earned the nickname Owlcapone. As I write this, a Barred Owl has been startling the Brookwood Hills neighborhood of Atlanta, swooping down on people at dawn or dusk. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has recorded eighty strikes, including some victims who have been hit multiple times. But this is extremely rare, and in the case of the Atlanta bird, a spokesperson from the DNR suggested that the owl may be human imprinted and was trying to capture people’s attention to seek food. One Barred Owl was even implicated in the murder of a woman in 2001 (though most experts agreed that the wounds did not look like those an owl might inflict, and the woman’s husband was eventually found guilty of the crime).”

“One of the indicators for changing views in societies, Johnson found, is the quantity of owl-related merchandise in the marketplace. “If owl-related things are readily available, that’s a good indicator of broader acceptance in a society,” he says. In Brazil, Turkey, and other countries with some positive momentum, there were owl-themed backpacks, clothing, jewelry, clocks, figurines, even beer. But after two years of searching the marketplaces of Belize, where owls are still considered bad luck, the team found only two items: a child’s backpack and a slate carving.”

“Several of Picasso’s etchings and prints feature owls inspired by his pet Little Owl. “They’re mostly R-rated,” says Robyn Fleming, a research librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “scenes of orgies, with the owl just sitting there in the midst of the revels”: Bacchanal with an Owl; Nocturnal Dance with an Owl; Prostitute, Sorceress, and Traveler in Clogs, with an owl at the center gazing provocatively at the viewer.”

““Three or four years after I first lured Houdini with mice, I went back to his woods to look for him. I whistled, and he came in. It had been years since I’d been in his woods, and he remembered that whistle!””

“Bierregaard thinks playfulness in Barred Owls may also explain some of their strikes on joggers and bikers wandering around cities and suburbs. It typically happens in late summer, early fall, he says. “We’ll get a rash of people reporting they’ve been hit by owls. And I think that’s just young owls being playful. I talked to a rehabber who had a couple of young owls that were orphans, and he raised them free flying around his house. He reported that by late summer, early fall, the young. owls were flying out and about and just whacking people that were riding by on their bikes or joggers, sort of playing tag with them. Of course, if you’re playing tag with an owl that has very sharp talons, it’s not much fun when you’re tagged ‘it!’”

Gail Buhl notes that adult owls in captivity will engage with enrichment items left around in their aviaries or pens. They may “foot” toilet paper tubes or egg cartons, tote them around and rip them apart – regardless of whether there is food hidden within. “Many of the small owls will carry around plastic toy insects at night,” she says. “They never try to consume them, but in the morning, we find the toys in all kinds of places – sometimes cached with leftover food or cached by themselves or just left on another perch.”

Karla Bloem says that the captive barn owl living at the International Owl Center also plays quite a bit at night. “She has stuffed animals, and at night she flies and pounces on them all over the place,” she says.

You could argue that pouncing and jumping and carrying around plastic insects is just hunting practice. But Bierregaard points to a video on YouTube of a barn owl in Spain playing with a black cat, the two animals sitting side by side and then suddenly swatting, swooping, and pouncing at each other, then just as suddenly, rejoining to nuzzle. “That just blew me away,” he says.”

“The program also collaborated with an American organization called RATS (Raptors Are the Solution), which works to reduce the use of rodenticides, creating a beautiful, colorful poster with pro-owl messages in Zulu and ten other languages in South Africa. “We’ve put it up in townships all over the place for kids to read and have a look and see that this is about the message,” says Haw. The project also enlisted more than 200 South African taxi drivers to put bumper stickers on their cabs with this simple message: Owls Eat Rats.””