Great Horned Owls do bathe, but they aren't like screech-owls who like to bathe every day if given the opportunity. Alice is more than happy to bathe once every two weeks or so in the summertime, and maybe once a month in the winter.
Rain often gets Alice in the mood for a bath. But she's gotten spoiled. (Imagine that!) We've caught her standing on the edge of her bath pan more than once, just looking at us as if to say "would you please give me a shower so I can take a proper bath?"
So we squirt her with a squirt bottle, and depending on how badly she's in the mood for a bath, she may hop into her bath pan within 60 seconds, or it make take a few minutes of hopping from one side to the other of her bath pan before she takes the plunge.
Once she's in, it's mess time. You thought your kids made a mess when they're in the tub? Ha! Alice throws her body and face into it and keeps dipping and ruffling her wings, splashing water all over Timbuktu. But occasional she's only in the mood for a "foot and beak bath" where she hikes up her skirt so she only gets her feet wet and dips just her bill in every now and then. Quite dainty.
In reality, Alice just acts like an overgrown robin in slow motion in a birdbath.
If she's NOT in the mood for a bath and we squirt her, she usually jumps off her perch and runs someplace else. She makes it quite obvious she's not in the mood for bathing.
I don't think many folks have had the privilege of observing a Great Horned Owl in such private matters as bathing. Laura Erickson, staff ornithologist for binoculars.com, has again been kind enough to post this video file on www.birderblog.com at http://www.birderblog.com/bird/OwlStuff/AliceBath15sec.wmv.
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.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Miss Manners
At age 9 1/2, it's high time Alice went to finishing school. This was prompted by the footing she gave me in late July and stern warnings from Marge Gibson, Alice's rehabber, and the University of Minnesota Raptor Center that human-imprinted Great Horned Owls have a tendency to turn nasty as they age.
I won't deny for a second that Alice is spoiled. She very certainly is. But there are some behaviors I was letting her get away with that needed to be changed.
1. The "pick up perch." Alice insisted on only being picked up from one certain perch in her room and no others. If she was on another perch, she flew away from me to either the "pick up" perch or another, depending on if she wanted to go to work or not. At Marge's suggestion, the "pick up" perch was removed.
I was concerned that by removing this major perch, Alice would have trouble getting around in her room. It turns out it made more space for her, and forced her to get into better shape to get around!
Bonus was that Alice no longer had her favorite perch to fly to when I went to pick her up. I made sure she didn't go anywhere other than onto my glove by grabbing her jesses (the leather straps that are always on her legs). This went over like a lead balloon at first, and more than once one stubborn owl hung upside down from my fist. I just had to be more stubborn than her, and now she's much more cooperative about getting onto the glove.
2. Curbing the biting habit. For whatever reason, some owls just have a snit about getting onto the glove. Once there, they're fine. Alice is one of those owls. She would always bite at the glove when I went to pick her up (unless she was majorly distracted by a cat or a dog.) And she would only step BACK onto the glove, not forward. I never pushed the issue since trying to make her step forward always seemed to result in more biting (thankfully she rarely bit hard.)
So I started teaching her to step UP (forward.) Every time she bit at the glove, I would quickly move it just out of biting distance and firmly tell her "no bite." At first I had to do this 50-100 times each time I went to pick her up (and I don't think that's an exaggeration.) But patience (or sheer stubbornness) is the key here. After refusing to allow her to bite the glove consistently every time I picked her up, she's gotten to the point where she doesn't even try to bite when picked up from some perches (her nest basket and work perches being notable exceptions.)
She voluntarily steps UP from some perches now, but we still have a ways to go.
3. Scratching at her window. When we moved Alice inside, I'm sure she didn't understand the concept of a window, and that's why she scratched at it. But it drove us nuts, so every time she scratched at the window, we came in to check on her. Even an owl brain can quickly figure out "scratching window = attention." And that's what it became...a means to get attention. It also seemed to be a bit of a displacement behavior, where she wanted something else and did the window scratching instead, but heck if I could ever figure out what she wanted other than attention.
So now whenever Alice scratches at her window, she's picked up and taken out of her room. If I'm up getting ready for work, I bring her downstairs with me (where she gives herself one heck of a workout rearranging and "killing" every blanket and pillow in the living room.) Or if I want to stay in bed a bit longer, I just bring her out into the hall.
This has curbed the window scratching fairly quickly. I think it was all a matter of attention. Now in the morning instead of scratching at her window at 6:45 AM, she scratches at the bedroom door (where I'm sleeping) until she lets herself in. Then she proceeds to "cache" every loose article of clothing in the closet or on the bed and eventually settles in to sleep on my dresser.
In the evenings I no longer send her upstairs after work. She chooses if she wants to go up or if she wants to have a good romp in the living room first.
Although many would say that owls are wise, I'd certainly agree that they are great at everything they need to do in the wild. But when it comes to learning concepts that have nothing to do with survival (like stepping onto a glove), Great Horned Owls can be slow, stubborn, resistant, and downright maddening. But we're making steady progress.
Alice won't graduate from finishing school anytime soon, but hopefully she's learning some manners (and I'm learning to have more patience.)
I won't deny for a second that Alice is spoiled. She very certainly is. But there are some behaviors I was letting her get away with that needed to be changed.
1. The "pick up perch." Alice insisted on only being picked up from one certain perch in her room and no others. If she was on another perch, she flew away from me to either the "pick up" perch or another, depending on if she wanted to go to work or not. At Marge's suggestion, the "pick up" perch was removed.
I was concerned that by removing this major perch, Alice would have trouble getting around in her room. It turns out it made more space for her, and forced her to get into better shape to get around!
Bonus was that Alice no longer had her favorite perch to fly to when I went to pick her up. I made sure she didn't go anywhere other than onto my glove by grabbing her jesses (the leather straps that are always on her legs). This went over like a lead balloon at first, and more than once one stubborn owl hung upside down from my fist. I just had to be more stubborn than her, and now she's much more cooperative about getting onto the glove.
2. Curbing the biting habit. For whatever reason, some owls just have a snit about getting onto the glove. Once there, they're fine. Alice is one of those owls. She would always bite at the glove when I went to pick her up (unless she was majorly distracted by a cat or a dog.) And she would only step BACK onto the glove, not forward. I never pushed the issue since trying to make her step forward always seemed to result in more biting (thankfully she rarely bit hard.)
So I started teaching her to step UP (forward.) Every time she bit at the glove, I would quickly move it just out of biting distance and firmly tell her "no bite." At first I had to do this 50-100 times each time I went to pick her up (and I don't think that's an exaggeration.) But patience (or sheer stubbornness) is the key here. After refusing to allow her to bite the glove consistently every time I picked her up, she's gotten to the point where she doesn't even try to bite when picked up from some perches (her nest basket and work perches being notable exceptions.)
She voluntarily steps UP from some perches now, but we still have a ways to go.
3. Scratching at her window. When we moved Alice inside, I'm sure she didn't understand the concept of a window, and that's why she scratched at it. But it drove us nuts, so every time she scratched at the window, we came in to check on her. Even an owl brain can quickly figure out "scratching window = attention." And that's what it became...a means to get attention. It also seemed to be a bit of a displacement behavior, where she wanted something else and did the window scratching instead, but heck if I could ever figure out what she wanted other than attention.
So now whenever Alice scratches at her window, she's picked up and taken out of her room. If I'm up getting ready for work, I bring her downstairs with me (where she gives herself one heck of a workout rearranging and "killing" every blanket and pillow in the living room.) Or if I want to stay in bed a bit longer, I just bring her out into the hall.
This has curbed the window scratching fairly quickly. I think it was all a matter of attention. Now in the morning instead of scratching at her window at 6:45 AM, she scratches at the bedroom door (where I'm sleeping) until she lets herself in. Then she proceeds to "cache" every loose article of clothing in the closet or on the bed and eventually settles in to sleep on my dresser.
In the evenings I no longer send her upstairs after work. She chooses if she wants to go up or if she wants to have a good romp in the living room first.
Although many would say that owls are wise, I'd certainly agree that they are great at everything they need to do in the wild. But when it comes to learning concepts that have nothing to do with survival (like stepping onto a glove), Great Horned Owls can be slow, stubborn, resistant, and downright maddening. But we're making steady progress.
Alice won't graduate from finishing school anytime soon, but hopefully she's learning some manners (and I'm learning to have more patience.)
Friday, August 25, 2006
Alice Sees Red
Owls apparently have long memories for significant things like locations of predators. So it's going to take Alice a while to appreciate the fact that her two nemeses (the cats) have found a new and loving home far enough away they won't be coming back. It's only been two days, but she's still very arduously looking for them every time we go outside.
Anyway, two owl biologist friends of mine engaged in a discussion about whether owls can see red light. Some biologists use red filters on their lights on the assumption that owls can't see red light, but this hasn't been proven. Then there's the question of if they can see infrared light. How could they find out for sure? Ask Alice.
And so it came to be that Alice became a guinea pig to see if indeed owls can see red light.
This was kind of a fun one. I waited until after dark, when Alice was just sitting on the hall railing, not really looking out the windows or anything. I started with a laser pointer, since I know she gets very interested in following that red dot around on the wall and floor. And as expected, she got very interested in the red dot and watched it zip around on the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Then on to the flashlight with a red filter. (No problem to come up with since my husband has a thing for flashlights and has more than I care to count.) The light, of course, was not as focused as a tight little laser beam, and I had quite a bit of trouble getting her interested in it.
At first I didn't think she could see the light since she wasn't following it at all as I moved it around on the ceiling and walls. But with patience, Alice finally paid attention to that big red spot on the wall. She tracked it as I moved it up on the ceiling over her head to the point her head was almost upside down over her back. No room for doubt there...she would never do that kind of rubber-necking without a good reason. A second try got her to repeat the performance, so she was in fact tracking the red light.
Then I tried infrared. Thanks to a grant from the Wilson Ornithological Society and a nice discount from binoculars.com, I have a generation 2 night vision scope to use in my Great Horned Owl vocal study (so I can observe the behavioral context of the vocalizations.) I turned on the infrared (IR) illuminator and projected it on the wall to see if Alice would notice it. No amount of patience, movement, or anything could get Alice to notice it.
I also checked the response of Alice's pupils to the lights. They did contract slightly when a red-filtered light was shined in them. I couldn't tell on the infrared, since I was too close for the night vision to focus properly, and there was sharp contrast that my eyes couldn't deal with between illuminated and unilluminated areas. But I certainly wasn't going to shine a laser pointer in her eye!
So there you have it: crude and unscientific proof that Alice sees red.
Speaking of experiments on owls, I found a discussion thread about whether or not Great Horned Owls could hear the drumming of Ruffed Grouse. So I played one of my bird CDs on a computer hooked up to speakers with a subwoofer that can handle the low sounds well. She never let on in any way that she could hear it...but she also didn't seem to pay any attention to the higher pitched calls of the Ruffed Grouse played right after the drumming.
Attention span is definitely a factor in this sort of a thing.
Anyway, two owl biologist friends of mine engaged in a discussion about whether owls can see red light. Some biologists use red filters on their lights on the assumption that owls can't see red light, but this hasn't been proven. Then there's the question of if they can see infrared light. How could they find out for sure? Ask Alice.
And so it came to be that Alice became a guinea pig to see if indeed owls can see red light.
This was kind of a fun one. I waited until after dark, when Alice was just sitting on the hall railing, not really looking out the windows or anything. I started with a laser pointer, since I know she gets very interested in following that red dot around on the wall and floor. And as expected, she got very interested in the red dot and watched it zip around on the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Then on to the flashlight with a red filter. (No problem to come up with since my husband has a thing for flashlights and has more than I care to count.) The light, of course, was not as focused as a tight little laser beam, and I had quite a bit of trouble getting her interested in it.
At first I didn't think she could see the light since she wasn't following it at all as I moved it around on the ceiling and walls. But with patience, Alice finally paid attention to that big red spot on the wall. She tracked it as I moved it up on the ceiling over her head to the point her head was almost upside down over her back. No room for doubt there...she would never do that kind of rubber-necking without a good reason. A second try got her to repeat the performance, so she was in fact tracking the red light.
Then I tried infrared. Thanks to a grant from the Wilson Ornithological Society and a nice discount from binoculars.com, I have a generation 2 night vision scope to use in my Great Horned Owl vocal study (so I can observe the behavioral context of the vocalizations.) I turned on the infrared (IR) illuminator and projected it on the wall to see if Alice would notice it. No amount of patience, movement, or anything could get Alice to notice it.
I also checked the response of Alice's pupils to the lights. They did contract slightly when a red-filtered light was shined in them. I couldn't tell on the infrared, since I was too close for the night vision to focus properly, and there was sharp contrast that my eyes couldn't deal with between illuminated and unilluminated areas. But I certainly wasn't going to shine a laser pointer in her eye!
So there you have it: crude and unscientific proof that Alice sees red.
Speaking of experiments on owls, I found a discussion thread about whether or not Great Horned Owls could hear the drumming of Ruffed Grouse. So I played one of my bird CDs on a computer hooked up to speakers with a subwoofer that can handle the low sounds well. She never let on in any way that she could hear it...but she also didn't seem to pay any attention to the higher pitched calls of the Ruffed Grouse played right after the drumming.
Attention span is definitely a factor in this sort of a thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)