bird post: 10:15 pm: OK, I am about 99% sure we just had a Spotted Owl in our backyard oak tree. It was hooting, barking, and ultimately squawking for a bit before settling into quieter hooting. There may have been two owls making noise at one point, perhaps an adult + juvenile. At first the noise sounded almost like a coyote, though not quite as yippy. I realized the noise was coming from the tree, and then as the dog investigated underneath, it magnified exponentially, so we called the dog indoors. At which point the owl calmed down but did not fly away, and resumed hooting for another twenty minutes or so.
Owl calls I am very familiar with: Great-horned, Barred, Screech (both Eastern & Western), Northern Saw-whet. I have heard less of, but would still recognize: Elf, Boreal, Barn, and Pygmy types. I have heard recordings of but do not have field audio experience with the rest, notably: Long-eared and Flammulated.
Description of the call: it sounded like a large bird, but higher in pitch than a Great-horned or Barred. When issuing its calmer call, its hooting was clear and of uneven cadence, reminiscent of Barred but not in a Barred pattern, and with no rolled or guttural notes at the end. It was best described as barking, like the barking of a medium-sized dog on crack. Neither deep like a big dog nor piercing like a small dog. During the mayhem with the real dog under the tree, there were some calls that may have come from a second bird that were rising in pitch, and a few genuine squawks. All calls were devoid of trills or buzzing, and nothing sounded screaming or wheezy.
It was so close, and the neighborhood so quiet, that had I had a microphone, I could have gotten a stellar recording. I maybe should notify someone about this, but don’t want to publish on a public listserve. Please discuss, and ask me pointed questions.
Catherine:
Are you in the CA range for Spotteds? I have searched for them, with no success near Tomales Bay and Muir Woods and at one point found out that I stood UNDER a roost tree for 15 minutes looking elsewhere. I know south of The Bay, they are very local and rare. What is the habitat around you? This is the time of the year that “just fledged” owls are wandering widely, trying to establish winter territories, so owls will pop up in places they have not been before. We are seeing young Barreds all over in the last few weeks. Be aware that there are regional differences in species calls too. But it sounds intriguing. Google an example of a Spotted’s call (sorry, but I find any written description of a call not too helpful) and see if it’s a match.
Mark
I listened to owl calls on my laptop while the owl was still calling, even, which is why I’m pretty sure. I’m waiting to hear about any recent histories here, but we are in range.
We are in the foothills of the San Gabriels, oak riparian I believe, and next to a canyon. The mountains are steep and rise to about 7000 ft, we’re right at the base. Which makes for an interesting mix, as an aside, because we will get higher-altitude birds that would usually have no business in suburban LA.
But there are always things like “what does a great-horned sound like when it’s four feet from a dog and has a juvenile with it…”
Though there are different calls that owls do, most of the variation is in the caterwauls and screams. Their standard calls (“who-cooks’for-you” for instance) et stay pretty much the same. AND the earthquake could have driven birds from their usual roosts and/or made them more vocal. Did it call again the next night? This why we all need to carry parabolic dishes and state-of-the-art mikes. Anyway, sounds good to me.
Mark
Yeah, I’m pretty sure. I’m going to have a look around tonight to see if I can find it again.
“Heard only” birds always cause hardcores to be a little uneasy in some species, but I have to say OWLS are traditionally the one group of birds where most birders are comfortable with the”heard only” status. Here in the east, the ONLY real confusion that occurs in the field among species are these:
1. Screams, caterwauling and screechs of Saw-whets (used in defense and around nest) sound exactly like the same TYPE of vocalizations of LONG-EAREDS. As a matter of fact, I have called in Saw-whets using recordings of nesting Long-eareds to prove my point. THAT SAID, the traditional, typical calls of both species cannot be mistaken for anyhting else, though sometimes there is variation in the rythum of the tooting of the Saw-whet.
2. Screams of young Great Horneds and calls of Barn Owls which can sound similar.
But by and large, the typical calls are really identifiable. Now the first time you hear a call, you always want to be sure, but no one wants to call in a potential nesting owl, especially a listed species like Spotted. For me, the sightings/hearings I keep on my list my may not always be of the level of proof to satisfy a rarities committee, but personally I am satisfied. Years ago, in winter while owling at Quabbin, I heard a BOREAL OWL call. This ended up being a year in which Boreals were found in the state. But I only heard the bird and did not record it. I sent my record in to the Massachusetts Avian Record Committee (of which I am a founding member) BUT asked them to not vote on it because I did not consider my written rcord of a heard only bird to be sufficient proof the bird was there to enter the state’s ornithological records, in which there needs to be a strong “paper trail”. However, for my own records, I KNOW I heard a Boreal and nothing else.
I see the only area of possible confusion being another birder playing a tape, and this has happeend especially for rails during various Birdathons. But if that really is not likely, there you go. Best of luck turning it up again.
Mark
Wait! Could it be you heard the “eagle dog” that washed up on Montauk last month?
SEE: http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=Montauk+Monster&FORM=MSNHED>1=46001
Mother of the baby from Eraserhead? YOU DECIDE!
Careful out there in the canyons. Eagle Dogs are closely related to the dreaded cat owls and the nefarious hamster goatsuckers, both of which are found in CA canyons.
Mark, the somewhat truth is sorta out there (maybe)
The Montauk Monster was in our Oak Tree!!
I was following the Montauk Monster saga – it was driving me crazy that no one gave a size/scale with the photo.
SCALE: spoken as the dyed-in the Ytterbium science minded-geek you are (and greatly appreciated for). I think an interesting question would be to ask people who have seen the photos, “how big they thought it was?” When you first saw it, what was your gut impression of how big it was? I thought terrier-size.
Mark
First thought was pit-bull-sized. Then considered raccoon-sized.
Any idea what led you to think it was those sizes you mentioned? What cues? Have you seen many “globsters”, ie: un-id’d globs of flesh that wash up on a beach. Typically they are initially merely globsters, but are of course later ID’d. I have seen several. Why does this whole thing remind me of the whole “hogzilla” hoopla?
Mark
It’s the old “the water drops are so big in that shot that it must be a model ship” film thing. Grains of sand are really the only scale reference. Also, those were my best guesses from anatomy..
Another photo, finally:
http://gothamist.com/2008/08/01/montauk_monster_1.php
That second photo makes all the difference in the world, though I still wish I could get a sharp blow-up. Now it just looks like a dog, raccoon or even a pig. As you well know, being in saltwater and decay do horrible things to flesh. Changes texture, inflates sections of the body. In the case of Basking Sharks, whole sections typically fall away leaving a corpse that looks very much like a long-necked elasmosaur with four paddles. What folks don’t realize is that what looks like the skull at the end of a long vertebeal column, is actually just a blob of cartilage, not the whole support for the head. I would have to draw it for that to make sense. I have seen first hand a number of beached and long dead Basking Sharks as well as the usual array of dead seals and whales. I did see the famous dead GIANT SQUID that washed up on Plum Island several decades back. That was cool. Well at least this eagle-dog was more entertaining than the usual half dozen tampon dispensers among the gazillion slipper shells you typically find in the wrack line. What’s your best wrack find?
Any luck with the owl? I just realized that was a YARD bird. Wow!
Mark