Photo of a Barred Owl by Linda Scribner.
By Brian Allen
It was dark out, pitch black, and my flashlight only made a small circle of light — enough for me to find my way back to the car this cold winter morning. I was in the Manistee State Game Area, doing a survey for owls during the Manistee Christmas Bird Count many years ago, and had been frustrated.
For about an hour I had hiked along the trail, on the bluff above the Manistee River, calling for Great Horned Owls, Screech Owls and Barred Owls. This was one of the best spots to find them in the rich bottom-forests of the game area, but I had heard nothing other than the distant prop roar of a plane taking off from Manistee County Blacker Airport. I opened the car door and sat down, with the door open, recording my stats and hoping at the last minute to hear a call way off across the valley.
Huge oak trees towered above me, faintly lit by my flashlight. I was glad to get back to the car. Something about this place always seemed a little creepy at night (still does), like you should always be looking behind for some creature following you.
Suddenly, a cry rang out from the tree above me.
“EEEEE-AAAAAAA-OOOOA.”
I swear I jumped a couple feet and my heart raced with the surge of adrenaline, but then my experience with this sound calmed me and I reached for my pen and jotted “Barred Owl 1.”
I first learned my birds in high school and, at that time, I had always thought of Barred Owls as being a bird of the northern forests. In camping and backpacking trips in the Upper Peninsula, Nordhouse Dunes and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, it was the Barred Owl that made me feel as though I was sleeping in the wild. Yet, in Kauffman’s “Lives of North American Birds” the author states, “The rich baritone hooting of the Barred Owl is a characteristic sound in southern swamps …”. Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist, led hundreds of slaves to freedom by locating and communicating with them in the southern forests using Barred Owl calls.
Barred Owls are a northern species, too. Their range extends from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, but they can live just as well in forests from Texas to Florida. They are most often seen in Florida, where they are much tamer and habituated to tourists using boardwalks in Corkscrew Swamp and the Everglades.
When I was an undergraduate at Michigan State University, I acquired a reputation as the guy that could call up owls. After joining the wildlife and birding clubs there, I led small groups out to the Rose Lake Wildlife Center to show them owls. It was a great way to meet girls for a shy guy like me! The key to finding owls was to go to the large, lowland forest there at dusk and call them in first, before a Great Horned Owl would come in. The key to impressing the girls was to not be too much of a nerd while calling them in.
When calling Barred Owls, you can sometimes be witness to a most bizarre event: a cacophony session.
While in college, I went backpacking with some friends on a trail in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. On the way to Chapel Beach, my friends stopped along the cliffs at sunset to roll boulders into the lake and watch their explosive splashes far below. I was a little concerned about the erosion but was overruled and decided to head off to make camp before it got dark. I could hear the guys descend the trail into camp as I made dinner and got a great fire going underneath the towering pines.
Then, as we sat around eating dinner, my friend Chris asked me to call in the owls. Soon, several Barred Owls came in and my friends were amazed at the racket. Screams, hoots and cries echoed off the cliffs, and we had fleeting glimpses of the large, round-headed owls lit by campfire light as they careened in the pines above. I got a lot of high-fives for the entertainment of the evening.
Although Barred Owls are quite large, they have exceedingly small talons and are unable to catch prey larger than squirrels or defend themselves against the stronger, large-taloned Great Horned Owl. Barred Owls mostly catch mice, shrews, frogs and some birds. If I am calling in smaller owls ⸺ like Screech Owls or Saw-whet Owls, potential prey of Barred Owls ⸺ I avoid calling in Barred Owls at the same time. This protects the smaller owls. Conversely, I never call in Great Horned Owls when I attempt to call in Barred Owls.
When people ask me about the owls they have heard or seen in the area, a great majority of the time it turns out to be the large and vocal Barred Owl. Barred Owls are very trusting and will often respond to even a poorly rendered imitation of their “who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all” call.
Try it, if you find yourself out at dusk or night in any mature, lowland hardwood or pine forest of 10 acres or more. Be patient. They seem to wait until you are just about ready to give up and head out before they ramp up their response.
Hopefully, this spring, if the pandemic ends, I will be able to do more owl walks and will post them on the Manistee Audubon website https://manisteeaudubon.blogspot.com/ and Facebook page, and in the Onekama Parks’ website: www.onekama.info
One night, after my family moved into our house in the forest north of Manistee, I heard the Barred Owls calling right in the yard. It was the middle of the night and I thought my two elementary school-aged boys were sound asleep. There was a rap on the bedroom door. My youngest son entered and in a tired, quavering voice asked, “Dad, since you’re the one that wanted to live here, could you please get the owls to shut up?”
Both boys, now grown, have moved to large cities downstate. They hope to move back up north, home to the Barred Owl, as long as their dad refrains from calling them into the front yard. I’m hoping some evening soon my two boys and my two-year-old grandson, who calls me “Aha”, will join me outside on a full-moon night. I picture him hearing ⸺ with his tender, young ears ⸺ the Barred Owls call back first, and he’ll say, “Aha, it sounds like Barred Owls!”
Dr. Brian Allen is an optometrist and a long-time birder and bird researcher based in Manistee County. Reach him at manisteebirder@gmail.com.
