Amateur Owling: Meet the Eastern Screech Owl

By Fred Bouchard

Owls have pop cred and cool cachet. These regal predators of the dark hours are icons of wisdom and spookiness: secretive, inscrutable, hair-raising. Kids are drawn to their candid, piercing, surprised eyes. They are harbingers of the occult and the unknown.

With feather-soft wingbeats, owls are inaudible in flight, the better to sneak up and snatch unwary prey with razor-sharp talons.

Owls’ amazing eyes have huge corneas and pupils. Their retina’s plentiful rods are super-sensitive to light and movement though a paucity of cones limits perception of color. Yes, they really can rotate (not spin) their heads witch-like up to 270 degrees. Their off-center ears allow for pinpoint auditory triangulation.

You’ve probably gawked awestruck at owls on National Geographic and Nature channels, or hung out with ur-naturalist David Attenborough on his owlish explorations, marveling at their slo-mo nocturnal derring-do.

You can meet individuals of New England’s few common owl species close up. Rescue birds are housed outdoors at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, or you can attend meet-and-greets with professional handlers via Mark and Marcia Wilson’s informative website eyesonowls.com.

Owls are usually easier to find on organized bird walks, if the leader has a pre-located quarry in mind and knows nearly precisely where to find it. Check out Brookline Bird Club (BBC) for walks (oftener in winter and spring) to well-known owl haunts: Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Menotomy Park in Arlington, Horn Pond in Woburn, Cold Springs Park in Newton, and Mass Audubon Habitat in Belmont, to name a few.

Owls may seem aloof and secretive, but they’re remarkably common in suburban areas, and not especially shy of humans. If you’re sharp-eyed and patient, you might spot an owl flitting by at dawn or dusk. If you’re inclined to go walkabout after dark, attune your ears to their various calls–-but be sure to leash your toy dogs.

As participants in the Brookline sector of 1990s Greater Boston Christmas Bird Counts, Bob Martell and I would regularly tally a dozen Screech Owls, a Great Horned Owl or two, and an occasional Barred Owl. All by voice, mind you, with few visuals beyond a shadow or two. Occasionally we’d importune (and spook) our quarries by shining a halogen torch into the canopies. These are the big three of urban owls; other species–-like scarce and local Short-eared and Long-eared Owls, and cute but elusive Saw-whet Owls–-are seldom found outside rural areas.

But how about this: Have the owls come near you – while you’re sleeping! It’s no dream to be woken up in the middle of a suburban night hearing sharp hoots, eerie whinnies, or hollow grunts. Ambient silence and minimal distractions are key aids. Crack your windows. Filter out midnight cowboys and air traffic. Turn off media, a/c, fans. Sleep lightly. Ignore snoring spouses. To aid the all-seeing owls, and not confuse avian migrants, please extinguish external night lights.

Let’s peek at the natural history of Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio).

The Northeast’s commonest small (7–10 inches) owl is chunky, neck-less, with pointy ear tufts and yellow eyes. Plumage is either bright rust or gray, bark-streaked for camouflage. Its geographic range covers the Eastern continental United States, excluding Maine. Its song is a descending whinny, its call a petulant, plosive chirrup; juveniles may wheeze. They nest in tree cavities, but often adapt to an ample nest box.

Like most owls, Screech Owls tag a favored tree with whitewash (feces) and strew its base with pellets, the regurgitated fur and bones of their prey, mostly small rodents and birds. Screech Owls, like many predators on urban pests, have become poison victims by preying on rodents targeted by the ubiquitous, now infamous, second generation rodenticide (SGAR) boxes. Read “Rat Poisons and Wildlife,” BCF Newsletter, March/April 2024.

Here are elaborated entries from my recent E-bird reports of Eastern Screech Owl:

1/27/24: I wake with a start. It’s pitch black and chilly; digital clock reads 3:45. A damp breeze blows in the bedroom window, followed by a low, featureless trill. It lasts several seconds: no descending whinny. Wait: again. Pause: again. Hmm. Atypical for the season; screechies usually turn up late summer. Surely not a Saw Whet Owl!

7/31/24: Two soft, brief whinnies waft through the bathroom window while I’m brushing teeth. My earliest previous summer record in a decade was 7/22/23. Is climate change involved? Oh, wait: my neighbors cut down the ancient 60-foot maple behind our garage just two weeks ago. That’ll prove a subtle game-shifter for all Winn-Brook birds.

Previous entries back to 2018 include a few annual hearings at night. Sometimes I’d whinny back at them. I was not tempted to get dressed and go out and possibly roust them with a flashlight. That could activate the “needle-in-a-haystack” and another adage: unlike “good” children, screechies are usually heard but not seen. And neither heard nor seen in the vicinity of the larger and equally common Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls, either of which might pluck a screechie as a midnight snack.

My recent Screech Owl sightings were of gray and red individuals residing separately at Mount Auburn Cemetery. The grey (2021-3) lived in a large sugar maple not far from the grounds crew’s headquarters. You’d locate his off-kilter (horizontal) knot-hole, and he’d either be IN (dozing or squinting at you) or NOT. The red (2019-21) made its home in a scarlet oak not 200 yards away.

Such birds were often featured starlets on BBC walks. On lucky days, they might be sunning themselves on an open branch. Owls tend to be loners except in breeding season, usually late winter; to my knowledge, no one ever reported whether those two ever met. Another grey thrived for years in a hole above a bench near the one-mile marker on the Fresh Pond loop.

Owl fans may expand their knowledge by watching this taped webinar “Owls of Massachusetts” [expires May 1] by Mass Audubon naturalist Doug Lowry, hosted by Robert Hayes of Tewksbury Public Library: bit.ly/BCF-MA-owls.

Fred Bouchard is a member of the Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter Committee and is a semi-centennial member of the Brookline Bird Club.

Shawn Carey is a globetrotting nature photographer and videographer whose avian portraits have graced all five of the newsletter’s bird essays. View more of his work at migrationproductions.com.