Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:37:57 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Rick Sussman Subject: More on owl vocalizations... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This from one of my perennial favorite winter reads, The Owl Papers, by Jonathan Evan Maslow, p.75-76: "The pitch of various owls' notes is determined by the size of the air passage in the throat-- the bigger the bird, the larger the air passage, and the deeper the note, which is why small owls tend to whistle while the larger species hoot. Although the smaller owls are careful to disguise their voices through ventriloquism, all owls have control over their vocal volume." Another good source of owl information, The Book of Owls, by Lewis Wayne Walker, (p. 54, Great Horned Owl account) says this about VOICE: "...possibly the sex of all owls could be determined by their calls by a person with perfect pitch perception, but to my untrained ears the notes uttered by both sexes of the smaller varieties sound very much alike. With the Horned Owl, however, there is an easily recognized difference in that the males voice is pitched three or four half tones lower than the female's -- even though females are larger. So, it is indeed the male with the deeper voice! Rick Sussman Ashton,MD warblerick@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================