Alice the Great Horned Owl is a permanently injured owl who works at the Houston Nature Center in Houston, MN and lives with her handler, Karla Bloem. Rusty and Iris are Great Horned Owls that are both blind in their right eyes and cannot live in the wild. Rusty and Iris are breeding in captivity as part of Karla's vocal study on Great Horned Owls. All together they have led to the creation of an International Owl Center in Houston, MN and an International Festival of Owls.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Iris Squawks
We always think of Great Horned Owls hooting. But they actually do several types of hoots, a variety of chitters, and on occasion, some different kinds of squawks.
I have a fairly good handle on what most of the hoots and chitters mean, but the squawks leave me a bit clueless. They are quite uncommon, which makes it even more difficult to figure out what they mean.
The other evening while I was sitting in front of the computer Iris started squawking. COOL! And it wasn't a single or double squawk...it was a 3-4 noter, repeatedly! (See video)
Interestingly, not long after Iris started squawking, a wild female started hooting just outside the cages. It wasn't Virginia, the resident wild female, or Scarlett Owl Hara, the female that tried for months to steal Rusty away from Iris. After reviewing spectrograms of the hoots, I think it was Jezebelle, a female who was here for a few days in August flirting with Rusty and trying to attack Iris. She's the one who hurt her eye slamming into the window where Alice was.
Talk about exciting...hearing Iris squawk AND this other female here!
Now the real question is: Did Iris know Jezebelle was out there before she started squawking, or did Jezebelle hear Iris and come over and hoot? We can only speculate.
But Iris did some multi-squawks again at about 10 PM last night (thanks to a viewer for catching that!) She was sitting on a perch in the flight cage next to Rusty. Nothing was going on. No other owls hooted. I couldn't come up with any reason she was doing it.
At any rate, please post a comment here if you hear any squawking so we can eventually figure out what it means.
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at 10:28 est. time on friday Dec 23 rd heard the squawking . Not sure if any owls where outside i did not have sound up that high tonight.
ReplyDeleteThank you.. Have a Very Merry Christmas.
Loverofhummingbirds
at 10:45pm Los Angeles time Friday night one of the owls went hoo-hoo-hoo. I don't know which one as I am just new to this site.
ReplyDeleteMartha
Hey Karla,
ReplyDeleteBetween ca 4pm to 4:10PM today Dec 25 one of the owls sat on the high perch doing the regular hoo-hoo´s then jumped up the the right nest(?) After that it´s been quiet.
around 4.20pm one of them hooted with vibrato.
ReplyDeleteRight now Iris i think it is, is up in the nest doing a hoot-a-thon, like h,h,h,h,hoooo at 4.45 to 4.50pm
ReplyDeleteI think i just heard an owl hooting from the woods at around 5.10 and Iris or Rusty answered back.
ReplyDeleteKarla, i think you have a visitor, right now one of yours is sitting infront on the window exchaing hoots with a wild one sitting just outside! at 5.25 pm dec 25. Think the noise i heard ealier must´ve been the wild one scratching the window or wall!
ReplyDeleteIt´s the camera facing the Owl door-Hope that helps.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the observations, Tommy! The wild owl outside you're hearing is Victor, the resident wild male. Scratching you may be hearing is usually mice in the walls. Rusty is the one with vibrato. If you watch from http://www.ustream.tv/channel/great-horned-owl-breeding-project there's a live chat that I'm on sometimes, and if not, lots of the other folks can fill you in on details too. Thanks for watching!
ReplyDeleteBoth Iris and Rusty was sitting on the perch infront of the door a few moments ago and i could hear the wild one hooting. Atleast i think it is a wild one because it sounds like its hoots are coming from a distance.
ReplyDeleteHey Karla, i´ve always had a fascination/fear of owls-It´s very interesting hearing/seeing them this close up. I´ve heard Tawny´s and Eagle-Owls in real life at my Dad´s summer-house. Btw, can Eagle Owls and GHO´s interbreed in captivity?
ReplyDeleteVictors back and i think Iris is the one hooting back at around 7.40 PM. Right now the lightly coloured one is preening.
ReplyDeleteAll three are going at it :)
ReplyDeleteLike ho-ho-ho hoo hoo Chitter as well!! cool ;) on the hour: 8 PM
ReplyDeleteIris sounds really mad while Rusty´s quite cool
ReplyDeleteWow Iris is in Release aviary Cook-tail hooting!
ReplyDeleteBoth couples are battling with out via hooting!! Both Iris and Rusty on the same perch in the Training avery!
ReplyDeleteCopulation at 10.28Pm in the Training avery!!
ReplyDeleteWhich one of you was it that left gophers just now?
ReplyDeleteSorry . . . not related to this post . . . no other e-mail for you!
ReplyDeleteBut it looks like you've given my husband and I something to do on New Year's Eve. I wanted to do something, and we both have the next day off, but I'm not a party girl. Going owl hunting sounds like fun to me. We will plan to come!
Have you seen any Snowy Owls yet this year? We saw one at the La Crosse airport.
ReplyDeleteYes, we saw a snowy owl at the Wastewater Plant in Muskegon, MI on December 26 and 27. It's was a first for me and I got lots of pictures. So beautiful. MapleOwl
ReplyDelete(screwball here--for some reason, I can't sign in with my livejournal credentials...)
ReplyDeleteIt's around 09:30 PST on 31 Dec 2011, and for the past few minutes (at least 10), I've been hearing something that sounds a lot like gunfire. Is this expected? (Sounds like someone doing target practice with a revolver, based on shot interval.) Whoever's on camera (side perch in release cage--Iris?) is looking around but doesn't seem to be reacting much to the noise.
Just wondering....
Also, there was some extended, fairly intense hooting and grunting yesterday morning from around 04:33 - 04:38 PST that started with Iris on the log perch in the breeding cage and Rusty somewhere off camera (in the nest? *VERY* loud), which ended with Rusty flying to Iris, the two copulating (with teakettle noises from Iris), and Rusty flying over to the wall perch opposite. Didn't see anything this morning, but I also tuned in kind of late.
Yes, the neighbor does a lot of target practice, so that's what you're hearing. Doesn't seem to bother Rusty and Iris. Thanks for the observations!
ReplyDeleteGreetings,
ReplyDeleteI just saw them mate at approx 8:10pm PST-there were 2 hooting from outside the camera range-'behind' us, and the two were also hooting/responding inside and looking back toward the camera-she then flew over to the near perch, and he came over and mated her a few minutes later-he seems quite larger than her-maybe just the camera? She 'squealed' big time-I wonder if possibly the male's talons hurt while trying to maintain balance, as the female does this when I observe them here also most times-once she basically threw him off!
So sad seeing there one eye...I watched her for a while just sitting on the near perch-then she turned her head and looked at the camera for a while-must be a lonely life for them.
I've been observing a pair for months now in the wild (Cal)and I've seen them mate 9 times so far (and two days in a row for the first time). They seem to do all their 'bonding stuff' early, and then get on with hunting-sometimes going their separate ways (at least as long as I can track them once it's dark)and I've been very fascinated trying to figure out what the sounds mean, too! As well as the hooting-it's so easy to anthropomorph!
Will try to view some more, but i've no computer at home and 'fun' time is limited when I'm online!
Peace and keep up the good work.
Last night at about 8pm cam time when iris was at the nest it looked like she grunted alittle before she did her hooting.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to see the video of Iris squawking but it says that the video was removed by user. why was it removed?I'm sure alot of people are wondering that too.
ReplyDeleteI would love to show you the video too! For some reason my videos directly from my cams no longer upload properly to YouTube. So I'm in the process of trying to find the right video converter software to convert them into a format YouTube can use. Right now if I post it there's no audio, which totally defeats the purpose!
ReplyDeleteI've been watching Rusty & Iris for awhile now--I have the cam on in the background while I write a paper on another computer--and they have been quite vocal! Lots of "hoo-ho-ho-hoo, hoo, hoo" and some quiet "hoo. hoo. hoo." They're now hooting together, and they mated 2 or 3 minutes ago. I haven't heard any squawking, just hooting. There have been some assorted wildlife noises outside, maybe a dog or something? and I think some of their hooting may have been a reaction to that.
ReplyDeleteThere is now some very faint hooting, and I can't tell if it's Iris or another female (Iris is hiding in that little nook by the ledge), but Rusty is responding enthusiastically.
This is exciting! I almost never get to hear hoots, since the GHOW I work with sometimes doesn't seem to talk at all.
An update to my previous comment: Later on in the night, Rusty & Iris mated again, and I definitely heard some kind of squawking.
ReplyDeleteIf you can include the time you hear the squawks, that would be very helpful. And specify if it's cam time, eastern time, or whatever time zone. It really helps me a lot to cue in on the spot in my recordings. Thanks!
ReplyDelete