• picture
  • picture
  • picture
  • picture
Public Radio's Environmental News Magazine (follow us on Google News)

BirdNote®: Screech-Owl

Air Date: Week of

Eastern Screech-Owl red morph (Photo: © Diane E. Newbery.jpg)

Of all familiar birds, the Screech-Owl has the spookiest and scariest calls, as Mary McCann explains in this week's BirdNote®.



Transcript

CURWOOD: From the noble eagle, to birds of a very different feather. At this time of year thoughts turn to things ghostly and strange. And as BirdNote®'s Mary McCann points out - the avian kingdom has its own scary actors.

[EERIE TRILL OF AN EASTERN SCREECH-OWL]

MCCANN: Sometimes, owls strike us as downright spooky. The spine-tingling call of an Eastern Screech-Owl is a case-in-point.

[EERIE TRILL OF AN EASTERN SCREECH-OWL]


Western Screech-Owl (Photo: © James N. Stuart)

MCCANN: Equally eerie is an owl’s seeming ability to rotate its head in a complete circle.

[THERAMIN MUSIC THAT SOUNDS LIKE OWL CALL]

MCCANN: Are spectral forces at work here, enabling an owl to spin its head 360 degrees? Or do its neck feathers hide some anatomical secret?

Well, an owl’s apparent head rotation is part illusion, part structural design. To begin with, because an owl’s large eyes are fixed in their sockets, it must rotate its neck to look around.


Eastern Screech-Owl (Photo: © Anne Bennett)

And an owl will frequently perch with its head turned, looking over its shoulder to prevent predators from sneaking up behind. Hearing a noise from an unseen source, the owl rotates its head to the front and then around to the opposite shoulder in one quick, smooth movement, in what appears to be a full circle. Uncanny.

The actual rotation is about 270 degrees. With 14 neck vertebrae – that’s twice as many as you have – an owl can turn its head 90 degrees further than you can. Even without any occult forces at work, this is a marvelous anatomical feat.
I’m Mary McCann.

CURWOOD: For pictures and more - glide on over to our web-site, loe dot org.

[Eastern Screech-Owl audio provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.
Recorded by W.L. Hershberger.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org October 2012 Narrator: Mary McCann]

 

Links

BirdNote®

 

Living on Earth wants to hear from you!

Living on Earth
62 Calef Highway, Suite 212
Lee, NH 03861
Telephone: 617-287-4121
E-mail: comments@loe.org

Newsletter [Click here]

Donate to Living on Earth!
Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental voice.

Newsletter
Living on Earth offers a weekly delivery of the show's rundown to your mailbox. Sign up for our newsletter today!

Sailors For The Sea: Be the change you want to sea.

Creating positive outcomes for future generations.

Innovating to make the world a better, more sustainable place to live. Listen to the race to 9 billion

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment: Committed to protecting and improving the health of the global environment.

Contribute to Living on Earth and receive, as our gift to you, an archival print of one of Mark Seth Lender's extraordinary wildlife photographs. Follow the link to see Mark's current collection of photographs.

Buy a signed copy of Mark Seth Lender's book Smeagull the Seagull & support Living on Earth