Owl Update

Last year's Barred owl female. Was this the victim?

We went to look for owl pellets and whitewash in an attempt to study the barred owl pair. We have not been able to find them near last year’s nest. The beginning of our walk was overcast and storms threatened. We began our search and almost immediately came across an area of feathers with two wings that looked like they had been pulled from the bird’s body. The wings were surrounded by feathers concentrated into a small circular area. We then searched the woods around the feathers for the remaining bird, but could not find anything. The feathers looked like they had not been disturbed since the kill had taken place. They were not scattered around as if another animal had been through the area. It appeared as if whatever had taken the body had simply flown away with it.  

Pile of feathers and wing.

Bird found within 4 feet of dead owl.



Fresh whitewash near last year's nest.



A few feet from the feathers, the body of a smaller bird was lying with its head completely detached. Across the trail, underneath a tree, one of the members of the class found some whitewash, evidence that an owl had been in the area. It was originally guessed that the wings we had found belonged to a red-tailed hawk. One of the guys in the class did some research and found that the wing pattern matched that of a barred owl. In reviewing the pictures, I looked up the wing pattern on a feather identification website and agree that they were feathers of a barred owl. All these findings pose many questions. What was able to so violently pull the wings off a barred owl? Where did the rest of it go? We do know that one of the only natural predators of a barred owl, the great horned owl, lives in the area. Did it feel threatened and kill the barred owl? And what was the smaller bird’s role in this mid-air drama, if that’s what it was? I’d like to find some of the answers to these questions but we may not be able to.

Is this the culprit?

Signs of Intelligence

Procyon lotor, the northern raccoon, is an interesting animal found all over Statesville. Raccoons are usually nocturnal and omnivorous, meaning they are equal opportunists when it comes to eating. The percentage of invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants that they consume are almost evenly distributed. At the greenway, we have seen raccoon tracks along the bank of the creek, crossing the trail, along the trail, and all over the woods. We even saw raccoon tracks around a dead, red-bellied woodpecker that had been plucked.

We put up two trail cameras for a month, and raccoons were in 85% of the pictures. Two of the pictures raised some questions. One picture shows four raccoons crawling around a tree. This was a picture from one of our non-baited stations. What makes it interesting is the fact that before the 1990’s, raccoons were thought to be mainly solitary animals. Recent studies have shown that females that are related sometimes meet at feeding grounds. Research also shows that males sometimes set up their own “bachelor pads” to defend their territory against outsiders.



Four raccoons hanging out. You can see the back of the fourth at the bottom of the picture.

The other picture was taken at a bait station. We placed a whole NY strip in a suet feeder cage and attached it to a tree. We got pictures of this particular raccoon climbing the tree, sniffing the meat, and the next picture showed that the steak was gone while the suet cage remained. How did the raccoon do it? Did he pull the steak through the cage? Not likely. Did he open the suet and then close it? Maybe he broke the steak into small enough pieces so that he could then pull them out. If he did this, he had to do it within a minute because the camera was set to have a one minute delay between shots.

Raccoon and empty suet feeder.

I heard one story recently where a raccoon took a suet feeder from a tree one night only to return the empty cage the next night to the base of the tree. It is safe to say that raccoons are very intelligent. Surprisingly, intelligence studies among raccoons are lacking. Some show that their learning speed is equivalent to the rhesus macaques, and another shows that they can remember solutions to problems for an extended period of time. There is a lot we do not know about these mammals. The one thing we do know is that they certainly are thriving along the greenway trails.

Hide and Seek?



I recently visited the great horned owl's nest to see if I could detect any evidence the owl is hanging around again. Last January, an owl used this abandoned crow's nest to raise two chicks. When I got under the nest, I heard a crow begin to "bark" really loud. It took me about ten seconds to spot him in a tree fifty feet from the nest. He was clearly agitated. Within thirty seconds, two more crows arrived. One dove straight into a pine as seven more crows arrived from the North. I immediately saw the female great horned fly out of the tree and into the nest. She ducked for cover in the nest as the crows continued to call loudly.



If you were a crow could you see the owl?



Mobbing behavior is common among crows. They often will chase hawks or owls from tree to tree. I watched this same owl get chased from six different trees over a period of twenty minutes last January before landing in the nest. We have also seen crows dive down and nip at this owl with their beaks as she perches. The literature suggest that they do this to protect themselves and their young or potential young. Researchers have even shown that crows will begin to display this behavior within several minutes after being exposed to just a stuffed owl in a tree.

On this particular day it took ten minutes for the crows to leave the area around the nest. One crow came back twice and called before leaving for good. It makes one wonder whether the crows just got tired and gave up or did they actually forget about the owl. Was this a friendly game of "hide and go seek" or were the crows trying to teach the owl a lesson? If the latter is true, this owl is a slow learner.

We discovered the owl on the nest for the next several days, which indicated she probably already has eggs.