Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 09:29:08 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: saw-whets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Saw-whets have not entirely left the region for cooler climates. I netted one more on Lamb's Knoll in Washington County last night. This may be the latest owl I've experienced in this area. Sometimes people contact me wondering if they have heard a saw-whet while owling. Without actually hearing a recording or being there I can never make an exact determination of what may have been heard. Best bet is to try to get a visual; much easier said than done. Remember that owls are good ventriloquists. One may sound far off and be a few feet from your face; or may seem close, but be a good distance off. Sweep the area with a low power flashlight to find your owl. Look near and far, low and high. I find covering the lens of a flashlight with my fingers to allow only a sliver of light through works well. And if you use only subdued light, you haven't ruined your night vision for the next hour, allowing you to spot movement when the lights are off. Tooting is a key identifier for saw-whets, but not specific to them. Most owls can produce a similar toot. Screech owls can sound near identical to saw-whets. But they tend to not toot as long, usually. Even barred owls and sometimes great horneds can toot a bit like saw-whets. A barred owl can even do a perfect imitation of a screech owl trill. I once observed one use this deceit to trick the smaller owl into responding. That screech quickly became a meal when another silent barred owl pounced on it. If your tooting is in response to the playback or imitation of another species of owl call, then you are probably hearing an impersonator. During the winter months, our smallest owl is generally quiet. Saw-whets do toot, but they also chirp, twitter, scream, wail and make sounds similar to a cat's meow. These are the sounds you are most likely to hear in Maryland. I have heard them in full tooting mode as early as January and through the spring migration. In big migration years I have heard them tooting in the Fall. Most of this early tooting is in response to the audio lures used during my banding. These lures play a continuous tape all night long. I do not recommend this tactic when doing surveys for breeding owls or in areas where owls are wintering as it can be disturbing to them (refer back to the unfortunate screech mentioned above, I had originally called him in by whistling, imagine what a pair of barreds could do if you called in saw-whets all night long). In fact, the best way to survey for owls is to play short samples of their call interspersed with lengthy listening periods. A territorial owl will come in to investigate and not finding the intruder, may attempt to provoke it into calling again by uttering his own call. Playing too much call will turn many owls away. They realize its just another birder without you ever seeing them. While saw-whets are probably rather particular in their choice of residence, they can be found nearly anywhere during migration. I have seen them in towns and flying across highways in open rural areas. While most successful netting is done in good owl habitat, a friend nets some in his backyard in the middle of a large agricultural valley. So habitat is not a good method of ruling a saw-whet in or out based on a short spell of tooting. There is probably some nomadic population during the winter months so you may find them in odd places then. None of this amounts to hard rules. Owls are still not well known. They never fail to surprise me with a new sound or behavior and I have spent quite a lot of time in their domain, during their hours. I have even found saw-whets spontaneously calling in the middle of a bright sunny day. So much for the completely nocturnal saw-whet theory. But if in doubt, a toot is not a good tick on your list unless you are very familiar with the saw-whet's vocabulary and that of its other nocturnal neighbors. Steve Huy Middletown, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================