Owls

Alex Re

Hello, welcome to on wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week. And I guarantee you, you're gonna come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. You definitely want to stay tuned for this episode because today we have Chris Susi from the Raptor trust in New Jersey as our special guest. So now might be a good time to go out and buy some night vision goggles, because we're talking about the night's silent predators, owls.

Unknown Speaker

When you think of an owl, you may be imagining something that looks like Hedwig from Harry Potter. But what you might not know is that owls come in all different shapes and sizes. There are over 250 different species of owls. And they're divided into two families. Titanic day, which are owls that have heart shaped faces and streak a day, which are owls that have rounder faces. There are owls on every continent except for Antarctica, and they live in a variety of different habitats. Although most owls live in trees and barns, one species of owl actually lives underground. That hour is called the burrowing owl. The largest species of owl is a great horned owl. And their wingspan can get to be around four and a half feet long. And the smallest owl is called the elf owl. And their wingspan only gets to be about 10 and a half inches long. owls may look a little chunky, but that's because they have a lot of feathers that help keep them warm. And it's actually really hard to spot an owl because their feather color usually blends in so well with the trees. And this is a form of camouflage. And owls really use stealth to their advantage when they're hunting for prey. And we'll get more into that when I have my interview with Chris. Speaking of hunting, most owls are nocturnal, meaning that they only hunt at night. And they're really great predators. They usually eat small mammals, frogs, snakes and lizards. And the color of their eyes actually indicates what time they like to hunt. Dark brown and black eyes means that they like to hunt at night. Yellow means they hunt during the day. And orange means they hunt during Twilight hours. owls have beaks instead of teeth, which means that they can't really chew up their food, and they have to swallow it whole. So this means that they swallow every part of the animal that they're eating. And their stomach acid isn't strong enough to digest feathers for and bones. So they have to vomit that up. And that makes what we call an owl pellet. When they're not busy vomiting up their food, owls need to find love. A lot of owls use their Hoot sound in order to find a mate. A lot of owl species are monogamous, which means that they only mate with one other individual. Although 25% of barn owls separate from their pairs, which is actually better than the divorce rate in the United States, which is around 40%. And for owls raising kids is a team effort. The male usually hunts for food while the female is keeping the baby safe. And some owl species like the short eared owl will lay a different amount of eggs depending on if food is scarce or plentiful. Usually more food means more eggs will be laid. Unlike a lot of birds, most owls don't really migrate. But there are a few exceptions. snowy owls have a really weird migratory pattern every four to five years, where they fly a lot further south than usual. And this phenomenon is called eruption. And they do this intermittently. Because every so often, when the owl population starts to rise, they don't really have enough food to support the entire population. So they have to travel farther distances to find it. Okay, so we're gonna take a break. And when we get back, you're gonna hear my interview with Chris Susi from the Raptor trust.

Unknown Speaker

Time for a trivia question. What was the first animal to go to space? A a fruit fly? Be a monkey. See a human or D a dog?

Unknown Speaker

The answer is a fruit flies were sent into space in 1947 Hi, Chris, how are you doing?

Chris Soucy

Oh, great. Thanks. Thanks so much, Alex, it's a pleasure to be here with you on Wild West.

Unknown Speaker

Oh, thank you for coming on the podcast to talk about ours. So before we get into owls, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Unknown Speaker

Sure, um, five to 10, I have blue eyes, I like long walks in the woods. Actually, I really do like long walks in the woods. And that's part of the gig at the Raptor trust. Um, so I grew up at the rafter trust, really, literally, my parents founded the organization. Um, you know, it's been part of my life for, you know, 51 of my 65 years. But I had a sense, you know, even when I was kid, just how sort of special and interesting and kind of crazy it was, um, I left, I went to Rutgers, I stayed in New Jersey, you know, through through college, and you know, lift real close to home, I moved out west and lift in Colorado and New Mexico and other places for a while. But you know, the rafter trust in New Jersey and the great swamp in particular always kind of felt like home. My dad passed away six or seven years ago, and the Board of Trustees asked me to come home and steer the ship. And, you know, it's amazing organization with a long, long history of doing great work for wildlife, and the environment and education and birds in particular. And no, I'm proud to be proud to be back.

Unknown Speaker

That's great. Can you talk a little bit more about what the Raptor trust does and what you do there at the organization? Sure.

Unknown Speaker

So we're a wildlife rehabilitation organization primarily. And we have sort of a three fold mission. One is to provide free care for any wild birds that need assistance. And while our name is the Raptor trust, we take in any native wild bird that has been displaced from its nest or injured or hit by a car, you know, we see birds that are orphans, we see birds that are injured, we take in as many as 6000 a year we've had over 140,000 birds since since the organization's founding. And we've tried to get as many of them back into the wild as possible, this is where they belong. So that is our main goal. And we're successful as often as not so you know, having put 50 or 60,000 birds back into the wild is a quite an accomplishment. And it takes a large, large crew. Part of the mission is also education. So we have a team of educators and teachers on board who speak to school groups and scout groups and lead tours, we have about 50 permanent resident birds that live at the Raptor trust, mostly Raptors, hawks, owls, eagles, Falcons, vultures, that are their birds that can't be released back into the wild, they've been injured or compromised in some way that would make them you know, unsuccessful and unable to survive in the wild. And then we have a mission also to provide, you know, an example for humane treatment of wildlife. We try to teach people how to be better stewards of the environment, and how to live in concert with these animals that share our world. And really, they've done very, very little damage to ours, and we've done a lot of damage there. So it's kind of where we try to, you know, cross the bridge and, you know, try to get people to meet owls and hawks halfway.

Unknown Speaker

That's, that's great. So, can you talk about some of the owls that you currently have at the Raptor trust,

Unknown Speaker

by can, I'll just highlight a couple who are kind of our rock stars. We have a great horned owl, whose name is ookla. He is 40 years old, which Wow, I think, from the research that I've done, and from the scouring of the internet, I've done he may be the second oldest great horned owl that ever lived. I can't find any records that conflict with that. He came to the Raptor trust in 1980 as just sort of fluffy, little ball, but he had already been raised in captivity. That period when they're really, really young is when they become imprinted in his first experiences for weeks of being fed and being cared for or by people so he never associated with owls. That bond happens very, very quickly. In the first few weeks as a wild animals life and particularly with birds, they you can't really turn that around, you know, so from six weeks old until now he kind of thinks he's a person He's a character. He's, you know, beloved by a lot of folks who come and visit the Raptor trust. He's a staff favorite. And he's been there so long that literally five generations of my family has known this one bird, my circle. My great grandmother gave him his name. Oglala means owl in Swedish. When she first saw it. All she said was glow from her to my 10 year old daughter. You know, it's kind of amazing that this bird is you know, he's out lifts boats, family. That is pretty amazing. But he's pretty cool. We have we have a snowy owl, which is not a breeding bird in New Jersey, it's a winter vagrant, they come down sometimes from the Arctic, they're in. Kind of, we're at the southern tip of their range. So they do come down from time to time. If you're out bird watching in the wild, you'll see snowy owls sometimes in the winter, but not every winter. But that's kind of a cool bird because it's that classic big white, you know, on the cigar box kind of owl. And then we have most of the other owls that occur here in the state. We have screech owls. And so it owls we have barn owls. In the past, we've had long eared owls, but they're very, very uncommon in this state. And we did have one for many, many years. But it passed away. They don't have lifespans except for UGA as long as most people do. So we have we got a lot out.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. Well, obviously, you've been around owls for a very long time. So can you answer this question? So other than the Classic Who that owls make, do they make other sounds as

Unknown Speaker

well? They do, um, in the two hours in the state of New Jersey that make that classic, you know who our sound are the great horned owl that we talked about before and the barred owl Ba, R E, D, it's got sort of vertical stripes or bars on its chest. And they both make different kinds of hooting sounds but they both do who when they're agitated, many owls in fact, many birds click their beaks, they just make like a snapping sound. And that means like, dude, you know, give me a break, you know, like, Get out of my face. So we see that sometimes if we're cleaning their cages in the middle of the day, owls are nocturnal and you wake them up they really don't want to be bothered they click it you and that's sort of like the giveaway noise. A lot of birds do that. But our little tiny tiny solid owls which are only you know, sort of like four inches tall they're smaller than an American Robin than you see in your yard. No eating worms. They're tiny, tiny little guys. They make a sound that sort of sounds like the the construction vehicle backing up they kind of go like dude to to to to the barn owl var n L which is a white sort of heartshaped faced owl makes this sort of like blood curdling deathly scream that sounds like someone being murdered by a knife. And in the night. It's hard. It's horrible, horrible sound. And when they're not making that sound, they make this like ghastly hissing noise. That sounds like steam escaping from a pipe. And strangely, screech owls, which are common in New Jersey, don't screech at all really, they make sort of a high pitch the winning noise almost like a horse. It's kind of like, um, high kind of low winning sound. And my album was like, good enough for the average user. I don't think any albums would think they were I was saying anything intelligible.

Unknown Speaker

That's That's really interesting. So, like you said, owls are nocturnal, and they hunt their prey at night. So what kind of advantages Do they have that makes them such great predators?

Unknown Speaker

They have, they have quite a few. For the record, though. Not all owls are nocturnal. Most of the jerseys are but there are some owls that or not, there's an owl called the burrowing owl commonly found sort of in the western United States and one up one small population in Florida. They're diurnal, and a couple of owls are what are called crepuscular, which is not diurnal, and not nocturnal, but they're active dawn and dusk rather than day or night. And the short eared owl, which does occur in New Jersey is kind of one of these crepuscular owls, but, but generally speaking, almost all owls in the world are nocturnal. In order for them to be really good hunters, they've got two or maybe even three major adaptations that are just sort of a step beyond what a lot of the other Raptors have. They have amazing, amazing hearing. Really gigantic ear holes, they don't really have ear external ears like we have sort of big ear lobes and these external, you know, flappy fleshy things, they just have a gigantic hole in the side of their head really. And they're actually not symmetrically placed one is a little bit higher on the side of the head than the other. And that helps them triangulate, you'll sometimes see videos of owl sort of wobbling their heads back and forth. And everybody says, Oh, that's cute, you know, it's like a bobble head. But what they're doing there is trying to balance the sound that they're hearing in their ears. And because their ears are asymmetrically placed, it helps them triangulate on prey in front of them. So once they're able to get the sound of something that they're hunting, maybe a mouse rustling in the leaves or something like that. Equally balanced in both ears, at the same volume, they know that their eyes are locked directly on the prey. So that's a really good adaptation to have su lives in the darkness really good hearing. Beyond that they have amazing eyesight really, really gigantic eyes huge in proportion to the size of their skulls. Like some owls, their eyes take up sort of half of the inside of their skulls. If you had eyes, the size of an owl, you'd have eyes basically like baseballs inside your head, I mean, it would be that well. And they also have extremely soft feathers, which helps them fly really quietly. They're not very fast fliers are not like a falcon that can go 200 miles an hour. They don't have to do that. And they don't need to do that. Because their thing is stealth. Like I can see you you can't see me, I can sneak up on you from behind and you don't even know I'm coming. That's the owls entire gig, you know, just sort of stealth and advantage of silence and being able to see a little better and hear a little better than most things. At night. The edges of their feathers are serrated, almost like a comb. So as they flap their wings, the air passes through the edges of those feathers almost silently. That's insane. That's really, really cool.

Unknown Speaker

Going off of that, I read about how owls eyes are kind of like tube shaped instead of spiracle. Right? Could you elaborate on that?

Unknown Speaker

Yeah.

Unknown Speaker

Basically, they have binoculars inside their heads. That's the it's a really good, very simple analogy. They have long, long tubes that are very, very efficient at collecting light, just like a telescope, or one lens of a binocular they have to both their eyes are forward facing a lot of birds have eyes sort of set more to the sides of their head. But owls have binocular vision more than most birds, both eyes can focus on the same object at the same time directly in front of them. And those eyes are really, really long, tubular shaped, like collecting machines, that's exactly what they do. They also have most of them as sort of disc shaped set of feathers on their face. That helps when they're listening for something, those feathers are pretty stiff, and it sort of pushes sound out to the edge of that disks. And that's right where the edges of their ears are. So they have kind of in reverse a satellite dish built into their face. It helps focus sound, but out at the edges of the disk. And that's where their ears are.

Unknown Speaker

Wow, that's pretty cool. do their eyes have anything to do with how they turn their heads really far? And how do owls do that?

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I think well, yes or no, they're their eyes do have something to do with that, and that they can't turn their eyes at all, their eyes are so big in their heads. And because they're long and tube shaped. They can't really turn them side to side over time, I guess over millenniums of you know, evolution, they've lost the muscles that we have to turn our eyes side to side. So their evolutionary strategy has been sort of to figure out how to turn their heads a little further. So they have more vertebrae in their neck about twice as many as we do. Most animals have about 13 vertebrae, I think there are some species that have 14 and humans typically I think six I'm not a mammal expert, I think six or seven for humans and about twice that many for owl so they can turn their heads about 270 degrees, which is like three quarters of the way around, which is like Linda Blair exorcise weird to watch, but it is what allows them to compensate for not being able to turn their eyes in the sockets.

Unknown Speaker

Wow, that's a great evolutionary advantage that Alice have,

Unknown Speaker

man. Yeah. And you picked a great topic to sort of talk about those little tiny things that make one species or one family or one genus of of animals, just slightly different than the rest. They're there. They're pretty unique even in the bird world.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, absolutely. We talked about how great they are at at hunting prey, do they have any natural predators? Some do.

Unknown Speaker

Typically, in nature, the larger the animal, you know, the fewer the predators and some pretty generalized statement. It's not true all over, but something like a great horned owl, which is a really big, really powerful owl in New Jersey stands, you know, two feet tall, you know, talents that can, you know, easily injure, probably not killed or injured, you know, human. But on the other end of the spectrum, there's smaller owls, like saw white owls and screech owls, they're tiny, you know, they only weigh a few ounces. They're small like songbirds and a larger owl like a great horned owl, or a Bartow would probably eat a smaller owl. Like, like a screech owl or so an owl. So the smaller ones do have natural predators, and, and most of them I think, are probably subject to predation. When they are a little more helpless and young. You know, nestlings and hatchlings, even when their eggs, snakes, they're, you know, crows and Blue Jays are nest predators, they will eat eggs, of just about any kind that they can find. So what I said about great horned owls being you know, big and able to defend themselves is true when they're adults and strong but not necessarily true when they're x.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. And can you talk a little bit about why owls are so important to the ecosystems that they live in?

Unknown Speaker

Oh, sure. They're really good. They're, they're very good check and balance for things that we often consider pests, which primarily in our area are rodents, you know, rats, mice, voles, moles, shrews, those kinds of things. They're beneficial to humans in that way. I don't particularly like to judge an animal's right to exist on this planet by its, you know, its value to humans, I think things are here for a reason. And most of these animals were here, hundreds of 1000s if not millions of years before humans took their current form, you know, they've, they got more of a right to be here thing we do, really. But they do provide a system for keeping populations of other things in balance. And for smaller owls, like screech owls that may be you know, grasshoppers, or little tiny frogs or other things for larger birds, like great horned owls, it's going to be you know, squirrels and skunks and things like that, but they all help keep a natural balance in the environment. And you know, any good ecologist will tell you that broader speciation, you know, more species equals a healthier environment. So, having more owls around is a good thing.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah. And that just shows how important they really are. Okay, so this is going to be my last question. What problems are owls facing right now? And what can we do to help?

Unknown Speaker

The biggest problem that I will face right now is people I mean, just sort of straight up, that's just the truth. They're in danger. In New Jersey, in particular, this is where you and I both live mostly from, you know, habitat loss. These animals are primarily in danger, I think, from human activity, you know, probably don't need to get into the, you know, the climate change thing, but that certainly plays a part of it a part in it. I think that the, the traditional breeding grounds of a lot of these types of birds, and really, all animals have have shifted and you know, had to move either north or south in response to changes in climate. So that's, that's the thing too, you know, and what can we do to help? I mean, there are things that people can do, you know, right here in New Jersey in their own backyard. I mean, I have a couple of screech owl boxes up in my backyard and we sell those at the Raptor trust and they're made of cedar but you can get them from Audubon and you can get them from wild birds unlimited and you can get you know bird feeders and bird houses and nesting boxes of all kinds not just for owls but for songbirds too and passing migrants need need food and I you know, I think that people can do things in their in their own yards that can can't really help. screech owls, in particular don't seem to mind too much human activity. They've done pretty well around humans and Lots of people even in suburban areas, send us photos all the time. Like, you know, I bought this box and I put it up in my yard and I, you know, all I had was just like quarter acre patch in the backyard look like there's this little red face sticking into the hole in the box. Don't you shouldn't your listeners shouldn't get their hopes up that just because they put a box up, they're gonna get an owl because that box is exactly the right size for squirrels. Unfortunately, the nesting hole is about three inches. And that's just the size that a screech owl likes. It's also just the size that your squirrel likes. But hey, look, if you're getting squirrels in your box, they need a place to live to. And they become really good, great horned owl food somewhere down the road. We're talking about owls like, don't, you know, don't despair if you get squirrels because some red tailed Hawk is going to eat them too.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, I mean, I don't know a single person who wouldn't want an owl living in their backyard. I know how cool is that? Right?

Unknown Speaker

Well, Chris, thank you so much for being here and giving us such awesome information about owls. Before you go, can you talk a little bit about where we can find information about the Raptor trust?

Unknown Speaker

Sure. So we have a raptor trust website, it's the rapture trust.org, you got to put the VA in there. Because just by luck, there's another place called rafter trust in England. And I couldn't be you know, you should go visit them too. But if you want to come see some here in New Jersey, you can check out our website, we have been closed to the public for quite some time since since the middle of March with the whole pandemic that's going on, we are gradually going to start reopening soon for a really limited sort of by appointment only kind of visitations, we have information and publications on our website, we have virtual programs that people can do, you can chat with one of our educators and they'll bring out a bird just like they would normally have done in the classroom, but instead sort of, you know, into your house on your zoom screen. So we're trying to do our best to meet people in the middle while keeping our staff safe. But you can visit the Raptor trust.org to sign that information. And, you know, we hope we hope to see as many people as soon as possible, whether that's in person or just virtually.

Unknown Speaker

Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you. And everyone, please go check out the Raptor trust because they're doing some awesome work. And thank you again so much, Chris, for coming on. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it. That interview was so cool, and I'm really glad we were able to have Chris on the podcast. As we learned owls play an important role in the environment. This is why you should definitely take a look at the Raptor trust. Some other organizations that also help owls are the owl Research Institute and burrowing owl conservation network. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of the owl. You can find the sources that we used for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference@www.on wildlife.org You can also email us at on wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday on wherever you listen to podcasts. And that's on wildlife.

Jess Avellino

You've been listening to on wildlife with Alex re brought to you every Wednesday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai