The Bird Whisperer

Great Horned Owl, perched in Wauchula, FL, at sunset, with the moon rising full.

The park ranger knelt on the sand, under the trees in the darkness. She turned on a tape recorder and the click-click-click and then a screech cried out into the woods. There was silence. She played it again. Still silence. Played it one more time and we heard a response call from the woods around us. In another minute, three Eastern Screech Owls swooped among the trees over our heads. Now they answered almost immediately when the tape cried out.

Ranger Stephanie was beside herself with delight over the success of her expedition. She had invited the campers in Little Manatee River State Park to come with her to “Call out the owls” – as she called it. Before we wandered in the woods, the ranger showed a slide presentation about the owls that lived in Florida. She talked about the Great Horned Owl, the biggest predator in the park. She said she would not try to call him out that evening. If she did, no other owl would come for the Great Horned Owl will kill an Eastern Screech Owl.

Late last year, while Jo and I were living in Wauchula, in the center of the state, we had three Great Horned Owls in our resort. I’d even, in a great stroke of luck, been able to photograph one as he sat on a telephone pole with a full moon rising behind his body. The setting sun cast him in a golden light with this enormous disk of the moon rising in the east.

Ranger Stephanie had arranged a visit from an animal rescue operator from Bradenton Beach. He brought out the Eastern Screech Owl, tiny, along with the Great Horned Owl and then he produced the Barn Owl, with its flat, heart-shaped face.  He explained their range and what they are likely to eat. The Great Horned Owl is powerful enough to pick up a cat and carry it off for dinner, he said. The Screech is a little thing. He demonstrated how the Barn Owl uses its flat face as a dish. He has ears, one higher than the other, that are so sensitive that he can hunt prey even when he cannot see the prey. He told us this had been demonstrated by blind-folding a Barn Owl. He still was able to locate and kill his food.

Jo and I were so intrigued by this mini-adventure that, the next night, as dusk drew close to us at our campground site, I brought out our iPad, with its Audubon book about the birds. The beauty of the electronic version of the book is that you can click on a bird’s sound. I clicked on the Eastern Screech Owl and its chatter spread out across the area.  After three plays, I was attacked by a Red Cardinal that swooped down on me, angry about the sound it was hearing. He (for he was flaming crimson) sat on the roof of our motor home and, when I played the owl’s voice again, it sent him into another swooping frenzy.

I switched over to the voice of the Red Cardinal and that brought a female Cardinal out of the woods to perch in a nearby branch and survey the marketplace. Now the male Cardinal was in a bit of a pickle. He had competition that he couldn’t actually see. So he returned to the branch, near the female, to chatter with her about not bothering with the unknown, unseen, competition.

We’ve tried this since then, and we always seem to be able to call out the birds in the evening. Now I’ve decided to call myself the Bird Whisperer!