From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. Owls. Their birds we more often hear than see, exceptionally well camouflaged creatures, many of whom move about in the hours of low light for an extra layer of stealth, making them seem even more mysterious. So what do you know about owls? Besides perhaps the eerie sound of their voices. For wildlife, photographer, and writer Paul Banach, owls have been the subject of much study, and also the topic of several of his books, and he's here today to tell us about these incredible animals who have commanded his attention and should command more of ours. So more in a moment but first these messages. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs, a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, colorblens.com.

And by High Mohing Seeds, Wolcott Vermont, Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Erbil Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMoengSeeds.com and by White Flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants on the web whiteflowerfarm.com. Paul Bannock is an award-winning author and wildlife photographer based in Seattle whose work focuses on the natural history of North America with a particular emphasis on the conservation of birds and their habitats. He's written several books about owls, including owl, a year in the lives of North American owls, and another about the Great Gray and what about the snowy owl, too, plus a book about woodpeckers. I'm so glad he's back on the program today, so high-poll, how are you? I'm doing really well, thank you, Margaret. Have you been out with the birds? Yes, I have. I was photographing great horned owls, branching from their nest and great gray owls, three nestlings huddled together with their mother and another nest. Oh, those faces, those faces. They're amazing, they're amazing looking birds. So just a little bit of background and so forth to get us started. You know, I mentioned the camouflage that owls kind of wear and they're often I guess, for POSCULAR or even nocturnal habits. How in the world do you manage all these incredible photos in your various owl books? I mean, it's not like they're out there posing. I knew or anything. Are they? No, it's a good question, Margaret, and to underline your point, owls have a distinctive shape. They're flatheaded. They have an almost a rectangular shaped body when they're perched. And they attract the attention of all kinds of animals, birds and mammals in particular, who know them as an animal that could potentially, let's just say, eat their young. So owls are attacked by a wide range of animals, and they're pursued also by humans oftentimes, so they benefit from blending into their environment and for moving as little as possible. So when they are moving, they're in pursuit of pray or they're in pursuit of a mate. And that means that their movement is going to occur at the same time that their prime pray is most likely either moving about or resting in a vulnerable place. In both cases, that tends to be at the low hours, at the risk, or dawn, or the first hours of darkness, or the last hours of darkness before the curtain of the morning raises. Yeah. Okay. So sorry, Margaret. We'll answer the second part of the question. How do I find them? The number one recommendation I have is

Learn about their life histories learn where you can find them and what habitat types?

What other common elements need to be there? What trees are present? What is the canopy cover like?

What other animals and plants live in those same ecosystems? And then familiarize yourself with a place. And as your sojourns into these places unfold, you begin to be alert to what's different. And the owls will show up significantly enough, where if you're in tune to your environment, you will notice, oh, is that a leaf, a extra leaf in that tree? Oh, no, it's something else. Maybe it's an owl. Is that a bump on that log? Oh my gosh, it's an owl. It comes about like that. And the strange thing happens, strange thing happens when you see your first owl of a particular species. Something happens in our brain. Our brain makes a map of that shape and of that size and of that color. So then in the future, as you scan the edges of that woodland or that field, your brain naturally is attracted to where it senses the shape and those colors may reside. Yes. Yes then it's spotted. Doug Talami, the entomologist and ecologist, he's a specialist in Lepidoptera, you know, it was always out looking at caterpillars and moths and so forth, said, it's a search image, what you just said, that sort of implant in the brain of that image. It's a search image and you're, you know, you're, it really does get imprinted in in there. And you know what you're looking for the next time and the next time and the next time. It's like it becomes familiar. It's fascinating. How many species in the United States and Canada was I think it was 19? I think I read in the book. Is that correct? Yes, you have it. There's 19 species in the US and Canada. And then there are some significant subspecies significant in that they're threatened subspecies that, for instance, a spotted owl has a northern spotted owl, a California spotted owl, and a Mexican spotted owl. And the ferocious pig meow has a cactus ferocious pig meow and then a, what's called a rich way pig meow. And those are separated because of subtle differences, but I call them out because they are indicator species for particular habitats that are risk. And as indicator species, their presence attests to the health of the ecosystem. Owls have that role in every ecosystem they inhabit and they inhabit every major ecosystem with the exception of Alpine Tundra habitat. Right. Here where I am, excuse me, in the kind of Hudson Valley Berkshaers area of the Northeast, we have I think Eastern Screech, Great Horned, Bard, Shordeer, Northern Sowet, And then I think we see the snowy sometimes. So I think that's sort of our owl palette, so to speak. And you have different ones there. Yes. You are. That are your sort of home owls. But owls move around. I was surprised. You know, reading in the book, some of them, they're not all resident in an area year-round, huh? They they move around. out. Yeah. It's quite fascinating. Owls are, for the most part, if we are generalized, the greatest occurrence is they are monogamous and stay with one mate for life unless one dies. But that is a fraction of the owls that stay on one home range, which is the area that they cover during a given year. Now within a home range you have a territory, which is typically based upon a nest site that is defended against other owls of their species, and perhaps later after the young fledge around a food source. And most owls will remain on that territory year round, but there are some fascinating exceptions. So for instance, the northern hawk owl is nomadic and you may have it nest regularly several hundred miles from where it nested in the previous year. And the more nomadic an owl is, the less predicted woods movements, invest the less likely it is that it will pair up with the same mate here. Now there are other owls that are migrat, and these owls will move, you know, 700 miles every year, unfairly predictable paths, but some of them are complex in their migrations, in that yes, they'll go on the same general path, but they will show up with the food is, and they have a way somehow of knowing where their target food is.

And for many owls, particularly the ones that are nomadic, the prime prey are animals in the bull and lemming families. These animals are very eruptive, eruptive meaning they can have have excessively large numbers on some years and very few on others and many owls have developed the ability to create more young, to create more eggs and raise more young when the voles or lemons are plentiful and may not even breed when they are not. So they're opportunists. They go where they go or dinner is. Yeah, and it's really interesting when you contrast even within a species. So for instance, the Great Grey Owl, which is found in the upper Great Lakes region and in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and then through Canada, Alaska, in the southern part of its range, it is able to feed on two major food items, the vols and the vols and gofers. As a result, when one food item is down, usually they don't fail both at the same time. So one food item is down, the other might be up. So they breed almost every year, but they produce fewer young and they have smaller territories. In the northern U.S., and throughout much of Canada, Alaska, during the breeding season, they feed on 90% of alls, and thus, the bull populations are much less regular than go for populations. So thus, these birds have to produce more young because they don't breed every year. Right. So where's the ones in the south will produce one, two, three young. The ones in the north might produce five or six. And they also have the ability, not only to possess a territory, but to be familiar with multiple territories and switch between those territories, depending which one has more voles in a given scene. Smart, very smart. And I read in the book a year in the lives of North American owls, I read that the different species they can range from as small as 12 ounces, which is like a smallish crow in weight to six and a half pounds, which is like twice I think the weight of a redtailed hawk, you know, so that's a pretty big creature. And I think the snowy is the largest of hour owls. Yeah, the female snowy owl is the largest owl in the world. It can weigh up to six owls. And I read once where the author compared the size and weight of a snowy owl to a bag of sugar. And think about how heavy a bag.

Stance, yeah, yeah, that's heavy. And the smallest I would think, I mean, crow sizes is close, but when you see the northern pig mow or the alfowl in particular, it feels sparrow-sized. Right. No, I just looked up body weights and, you know, well, in Cornell Lab of Horn Ethologies, you know, they have, you know, comparative sizes of birds and so forth. And I was like, where does it fit if it's so fascinating, fascinating. And it has either have other physical characteristics. I mean, the way their head turns, I'm sorry. I think you say the book is like as much as 200 degrees or something. I mean, it's. Yeah, 200 plus. You know, one time it's funny the way human beings relate to howls. There's something about the way they appear that makes us project all kinds of superpowers onto them. All the capabilities we wish we could have. I was once looking for a Northern Hawke out on a ranch up in some lands up in Manitoba. I went to the door about farmhouse and knocked in the door and asked him if I could go inside of his fence and see if I could find an owl. And he said, yeah, but first you got to hear my story. I went into my barn once and I looked and there was an owl looking at me inside the barn and it spun its head completely around six times before it stopped and looked at it. But there's others that believe that owls are very wise. Yes, yes. You can't tell you how many people have told me a story about how an owl appears right after they lost a loved one. As if the owl is the spirit of that person. And the eye-new in Japan believed that the owls were the guardians of their villages. And the Hopi Indians had saw special reverence to the burwing owls. And throughout human history, every society has had these strong, powerful beliefs about them, oftentimes as four warnings of good times or bad, as symbols of wisdom or symbols of bad luck or so to do. And then even the way they look has mesmerized people. The Mandarin word for owl, maltouling, is cat-headed eagle. Cat-headed eagle, that's perfect. because they are great hunters, predators. Generally speaking, I think they are thought of as raptures, even though they're not related closely to eagles or hawks. They're more closely related, I think, to like night jars and night hawks. But another thing that has always interested me living in a rural place surrounded by a lot of forest is that where as we talked about before we talked about your woodpecker book not so long ago. You know when you have a lot of trees especially old trees, owls and woodpeckers, no coincidence that they're both around, such habitats. But spring comes early for owls, they don't wait for spring, like when the light just starts to get a little longer, they're vocalizing and they're nesting. Yeah, there's seasons very different from a lot of our other birds and I think that's fascinating also Yeah, and it that is it is fascinating There is a trick to that and that's that owl eggs hatch at Virtually the identical time that their target prey Begins to become available and more them. Wow. Their prey arises from tunnels on the ground and will be found more on the surface or hit where they go out of a dormancy. And so the earliest nesting of our owls, the Great Horned Owl, is much has much more of a very diet. So it can nest much earlier. And the advantage of nesting earlier is you can get your young can be raised and attended to over a longer period of time before the winter comes. And owl youngsters have a longer period of dependency than many birds. I mean, when we talked about the woodpeckers, I noted that most woodpeckers were dependent on their on their parents for about four weeks. For owls, it's not unusual to be dependent on the parents for four months. However, so getting that early start helps them. Now going back to the hunting, what's fascinating about owls is owls are famous for their silent flight. But that silent flight for those owls to specialize in finding the prey based upon hearing, that silent flight also allows them to listen more carefully to the ground below without the disruption of loud wings. So the species of owls that specialize on hunting using hearing. So short eared owls, long eared owls, great, great owls, they all have silent flight and they have ears that are offset. For you and I, our ears are in the same plane. So when we hear a sound,

we turn our heads towards that sound, the sense of the direction. And owls ears are offset and

there's simply holes in the skull. They're not the ear tuffs, you see on a great horned owl, but their holes on either side of the skull that are offset so that sound reaches one ear before it reaches the other, helping the owl determine not just the direction of the sound but the height of the sound. And they combine that with those distinct, the feathers of that distinctive facial disc, you see, that distinctive rim of feathers you see around the head of the typical owl. That feature is most distinctive in those owls that rely upon their hearing. And I think of it as they can compress or expand that row or that frame of rigid feathers. And it's almost like the auditory equivalent of squinting and allows them to funnel that sound, like a parabolic disc to those offset ears and those two working in conjunction not distracted by the noise of flight allow these hearing specialists to catch prey under snow and grass while in flight prey that they never see but yet they capture even if they have to push through the turf and the snow to do it. Mm. Well, you mentioned the great horn, and we were talking about diet and hunting and so forth. And I also have you, my owl story, I lived in this place for what'd been here decades. And always I would hear the sound in, would think of it as late winter of of the barred owl, the who cooks for you sound, you know, very bright and most familiar where I am of owl sounds. And two or three winters, three winters ago it would be now. I didn't hear it anymore, but I heard, well you know who I heard, I heard the great horned owl. Yeah, who moved in and guess what? Guess what in the things that the great horned owl prays upon. So So that's that was a real you know that was a shock for me. You know, it's almost like killing your own You know, of course, we and we anthropomorphize and project all this stuff to animals, and that's crazy. But the bar doesn't bend back, and the great horned are here. They have taken the edge of the forest here. So I wanted just to talk a little bit about, besides the right food available, what makes good but I will have a habitat and this kind of dovetails into what we talked about before with woodpackers who are not disconnected from the answer to this question, what makes good habitat for owls? They're a lot of them nested in cavities and trees and on tops of old broken down off trees and things like that. Yes. Yes. And I love your story about the Great Horned and the Bart out. And there's two things though going on there. I love it. I mean, not because of the sad news because no, I know sad. But because even if that Great Horned and in that bar now, Bartow, you might have missed that Bartow, because every habitat is a femoral, every habitat, yes, constantly changing. Yes. And the great horned owl prefers the forest edge. Yes. Because edge hunters oftentimes are the, are the generalists and they benefit from being able to hunt in the woods and in the open. They can get more prey that way, whereas the barred owl is more an owl of closed canopy forests. And the two can coexist in the same forest as long as there's plenty of open lands and plenty of closed canopy forests. each will, I won't say avoid each other. The Great Horn doesn't have to avoid much. But they can both coexist and they coexist in the park near my house right now from year to year. But I'll have a tense interesting. The most important thing, not surprisingly, is where do they hunt and where do they nest? And for some, it's in the same type of habitat. So for instance, a northern pig meow, which can be found in the mountains of the west, and sometimes on the coast, the northern pig meow is an edge specialist, but it hunts and nests along that edge where there's lots of aspen and birch and alder, but also close canopy for us. And we'll eat everything from a frog and a lizard to a vol or a stellar's jay or even a large woodpecker. A northern spotted owl only lives in closed canopy for us that are that have trees that are over 150 years old and large standing dead trees. A burrowing owl only exists, only able to breed and hunt in short grass prairie. So in other words, where the grass has been grazed low and where so it can use its long legs to see in a distance in a treeless habitat. The shorter down, on the other hand, requires long grass prairie, because they nest directly on the ground and they need to have their nest hidden. They hunt from the air, not from the ground or raise it up. So they can benefit from the tall grass prairie. And it's really surprising the owls help us see habitats, we might otherwise miss. So for instance, if you're out in that open landscape in an agricultural area, it's really important that that agriculture area has the grazed areas for the burrowing owl, the tall grass areas for the shortered out, but also in that same habitat, you may have long eards along the streamways and the riparian areas nesting in magpine nests. You might have barn owls nesting in barns and steeples or in cliffside caves where they might have to find a cliffside cave that is safe from a great horned owl nesting in another cliff side cave or on a rapture nest. So even a habitat like our agricultural lands that may seem bereft of wildlife may have six or seven owl species. Those owls I just mentioned might be joined by Northern saw wet owl in a riparian area or a western screech owl or eastern screech owl in those same areas in a lightly tree landscape. Now what's important is not just the prey but also the the the nests and the of our 19 species, more than 10 of them nest in the cavities created by woodpeckers. I should say yes. Nest in the cavities created by woodpeckers. And they benefit by the fact that each of these architects, architects, meaning the 22 species of woodpeckers, creates a cavity of a specific size that would fit a specific out because every every cavity in Estine bird provides a cavity that they can fit into barbarily. They don't want excess room where a predator might reach in with talons or bill and pull them out so they want a tight fit. So the fact there are so many woodpecker species creating cavities of different sizes facing different in different habitats facing in a different direction has allowed the development of these different size and specialized owls and many habitats. I can hear a different woodpecker wake me up in the morning and a different owl serenade me at night. We've run out of time. There's a lot of owls and there's a lot more to learn and that's glad to have

spend some time with your various owl books, including Owl, a year in the lives of North American owls. We'll have a giveaway with the transcript of the show over on WayToGarden.com. I should have said that. I'm always glad to talk to you and I can't wait to see pictures of some of those babies you've been seeing in your recent photo journey.

So thank you for making time today.

Thank you, Mark. I'm always glad to talk to you and I can't wait to see pictures of some of those babies you've been seeing in your recent photo journey.

So thank you for making time today. Thank you, Mark. It was an absolute pleasure. Talk to you soon again. Bye-bye. And I hope I'll talk to all the rest of you soon again to now Don't Miss an Episode. You can subscribe for you to the podcast version of the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify. You can find me anytime at awayatagarden.com and on Facebook and on Instagram as

Add Away to Garden. And and on Facebook and on Instagram as at a way to garden and happy gardening meantime. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web colorblends dot comcom and by High Mohing Seeds, Wolcott Vermont Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Urbal Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMohingfarm.com