What better way to take the cure for cabin fever than get outside and listen to hooting owls on a cold winter night? That’s what drew us last weekend to Jerry Hightower’s “Owl Prowl” at the Environmental Education Center along the Chattahoochee River in Johns Creek.
An owl prowl is simply a nighttime session of looking and listening for owls, said Hightower, a naturalist/ranger at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.
Georgia’s owls, of course, hoot, hiss and screech all year long, but it is in winter when their haunting sounds seem to emanate most from the woods at dusk and on into the night.
Winter is peak breeding time for great horned, barred and barn owls — three of Georgia‘s four year-round native owl species. Their calls this time of year may attract mates, reinforce the bonds between pairs and mark individual territories. (Georgia‘s smallest owl, the Eastern screech owl, begins breeding around mid-March.)
It might be hard to imagine that birds nest in the dead of winter, especially with the bone-numbing cold we’ve had this season. Great horned owls, however, were incubating eggs even during the recent ice and snow storms, testament to their ability to withstand sub-freezing temperatures.
At the owl prowl, the frigid evening air was calm and a full moon shined brightly, conditions that tend to make owls even more vocal.
Before Hightower led us on an evening stroll in the nearby woods to try to hear hooting owls, we were introduced to a live barred owl, perched on the gloved arm of Lori Watterson, a naturalist at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. The owl has been injured and can’t be returned to the wild, so it is kept at the center for educational purposes.
Named for the barred patterns of its plumage, the barred owl has perhaps the most characteristic of all owl calls, Watterson said. It consists of six or seven repeated notes, usually with a questioning intonation at the end. Some liken it to, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”
The great horned owl, named for tufts of head feathers that resemble horns, has a deeper, gruffer voice. Its low, muffled hoots go something like “hoo, hoo, hoo, hooo-hoo.” The calls may boom out in the night.
The barn owl’s call is not a hoot. Instead, it is a harsh, raspy, screeching and hissing sound.
IN THE SKY: The moon will be last quarter Saturday night, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Venus is low in the east about two hours before dawn and will appear near the moon Wednesday (Feb. 26) morning. Mars is in the east a few hours after dark. Jupiter rises out of the east just before dark and is visible all night. Saturn rises out of the east about midnight.
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