Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 06:34:05 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Peter Webb Subject: Great Horned Owls MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In my experience, the higher-pitched birds are much more vocal and have the more elaborate, clearly delineated notes, usually 1-3-2-1, about E flat or E above middle C for the musically trained ear, while the lower-pitched birds usually only call in duet with the high-pitched birds, typically a long and a short hoot, about middle C in pitch. The behavior suggests that if they are like most songbirds (which they aren't), it would be the males that set up and hold territories, making them the higher-pitched birds. This experience, then, differs with Bent and Stasz in the detail-rich and more vocal birds having HIGHER rather than lower pitch, but that's what I've consistently heard over the years. I haven't gone as far as to color-mark, observe, and then "collect" and dissect the birds to determine their actual gender. I did watch one of the detail-rich higher-pitched birds call; instead of just standing and calling, the bird (male? female?) would lean forward almost to horizontal as it make each major call note. Whether they always bow when they call I couldn't say, but that one did and it was interesting to watch. Pete Webb Baltimore, Md (USA) pwebb@bcpl.net (home, after 6) pew@niroinc.com (work, 830-5 M-F) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================