On last week's VSO VA Beach weekend, Phil Kenny and I spent the
sunset-to-dark period at the end of Magotha Rd on the lower Eastern
Shore, watching and listening to the diurnal to crepuscular to
nocturnal transition. We did this Friday and Saturday nights. On
Friday, we heard Eastern Screech-Owl and Great Horned Owls calling. We
also heard a somewhat faint vocalization to the north which we took to
be a Barn Owl, though it seemed not quite right.
Saturday night, back at the same spot, the vocalizing bird was much
nearer, in the pines south of Magotha. And it was clearly not a Barn
Owl. We camped out standing in the road just into the marsh looking
back at the pines, to see if we could actually see something. And
literally flinching as American Woodcocks buzzed by our heads.
Eventually, in the last fading back light, we were able to watch a
Great Horned Owl making the call through binoculars. It turned its
head in various directions, making this "scree" call about every 10
seconds. And then stopped as it went completely dark.
The moment I saw the owl, I remembered a VA-Bird exchange from maybe a
year ago in which someone posted a "what the heck is this" and some
other sage birder identified it as a GHOW call. I just did a search
for that, but did not find the exchange. This would be the end of the
story, except that I was able to record the call on my iPhone and
using eBird's new audio upload capability, I added it to the GHOW
details on the species list. If you are interested, here is the link:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S26161101
Happy owl-days ;-)
Russ Taylor
