superb owl sunday

On this, Superb Owl Sunday, I wanted to share a couple of photos of superb owls I have worked with (though some individuals simply represent the species, as I have worked with many).

Storm, the European Barn Owl

I first met a barn owl when I was fifteen and started volunteering at a local aviary for a Girl Scout project. Little did I know the effect it would have on me, though in my heart I think I have always been a bird nerd, from my blue and white speckled parakeets to diligently reading and re-reading a book on eggs my Oma had gotten me for my birthday. Aurora was actually a North American Barn Owl, making her about twice the size of Storm, the European Barn Owl I would work with upon arriving in Wisconsin eight years later. She was beautiful and loved to be touched, a usual no-no with raptors, especially for the volunteers. However, with Aurora we were allowed to sink our fingers up to their joints into her dense, soft feathers. We scratched her neck and watched her eyelid droop, her half-lidded gaze portraying her ecstasy. Owls are incredibly high-stress animals, much more than people realize, they are just incredibly good at hiding that stress. I will say that in 95% of the videos I've seen on Youtube depicting people petting owls, the owls are displaying well-hidden stress signals: blinking too much, hunching over, keeping incredibly still and gazing ahead blankly as if they are trying to find a "happy place". I only know this from multiple years working directly with owls, but I can say that Aurora and Storm both loved to be touched (maybe it's a Barn Owl thing). When I arrived in Wisconsin, I met Storm on my first day and immediately fell in love. She was beautiful and ghost-like, such as her cousin the North American Barn Owl, but she was also tiny and that deemed her as adorable to me. I love tiny things. She was just barely a year old and was being trained to accept excessive handling, so check-ups and required grooming would not be as stressful. Storm was the third bird I handled in Wisconsin, where she foot tucked on my glove and snoozed after just five minutes. When our supervisor left us in the office to run errands or if she had the day off, we took Storm out of her enclosure (with permission, of course), and set her down on her perch in the office so she could keep us company. We would tie her leash so it was extra long, allowing her to perch on the backs of our chairs and, occasionally, our shoulders. In fact, the photo in my "about me" sidebar on the blog is of me and Storm. She was so even-keeled and great about training, I really miss her.

Oscar the Long-Eared Owl

While Storm was bred in captivity, the reason why she was so accepting of being touched and loved constantly and why she craved our attention, Oscar was found almost fatally injured as a chick. He fell from his nest and was grabbed by a dog, who thought Oscar was a squeaky toy. Luckily, someone managed to cease the dog before Oscar was killed, and he was brought to REGI as a patient in dire need of medical assistance. Unfortunately, the damage was too great to one of his wings, disallowing him from flying long distances. Oscar is incredibly skittish; Long-Eared Owls are one of the more high-stress species of an already high-stress family. They are fairly difficult to keep in captivity due to this stress, though there are facilities that do it. Oscar was a first for me, as I had never worked with a Long-Eared before, but I loved him immediately upon setting eyes on him. Our supervisor lifted the blanket that covered half his mew, to allow him to hide, so that we could see him for a brief moment on our first day. He immediately puffed his feathers out, attempting to make himself look large and intimidating. It looks just like this video, which went viral a little while ago. They really do puff themselves out like that in fear. It was funny, but also sad that he was so scared of us and his surroundings that he felt he needed to do that. I started slowly entering his mew rather than bursting in like so many other people were accustomed to doing, speaking to him softly as I changed his water, and then leaving as soon as his puffed-out status lessened in the slightest. Eventually, weeks later, he stopped puffing out at me at all. Even when I lifted back his blanket slightly, as long as I said, "Oscarrrr" in a sing-songy voice, my version of letting him know it was me and he was safe, he stayed calm. In fact, he started to make tiny sounds like little barks made in the back of his throat whenever I entered. He made them with no one else. Even just writing this is making me glow inside, I absolutely wish I could have taken him with me. To make sure he forever feels safe. Even with handling, instead of evading like he used to, once I had gained his trust he stepped up with slight complaint, making distraction squeals in an attempt to get me to "forget it ever happened". Once on his stump, where he made appearances at booths and programs, he would regain his calm stature and remain still, absolutely sure he was completely camouflaged in his silence.

Barred Owls

This particular Barred Owl that I took the photo of was a fledgling, almost the size of a full adult, who was ready to be released after months in rehab. However, this photo provides the face for two Barred Owls that have touched my heart in the past two years: Athena and Remi. Athena is a female Barred Owl residing at the environmental center in Minnesota I worked at. Her old trainer used to scare her to get her to do what she wanted, a terrible training tactic that did not work out too well in the long run. Now Athena is skittish and terrified of people. Even just walking past her mew results in a beak clack from her, a clear sign from an owl that it wants you to gtfo. When I first started at the center, no one was able to handle her, as she was definitely an advanced bird. Owls in general are a bit harder to master than other birds of prey (in my personal opinion), especially if they have not been raised in captivity. Our (attempted) bond started off with filling her water bucket and trying to avoid her getting so spooked that she would latch onto the window bars and flail helplessly. We were afraid she would break tail feathers. A couple of months into the job, we were assigned our birds we would train. I asked for Athena, but received Cica, the Red-Phase Eastern Screech Owl. Honestly, I am so incredibly happy about receiving Cica, because even though I'm not going to write about her extensively in this post (I could write like, a novel about this bird), she helped me realize what I love, and what I love is animal training. However, I was still Athena's main health checkup person. We were not allowed to handle our own birds or do negative things such as health checkups with them, since we didn't want them to associate us with those stressful activities. All of the owl ladies did health check-ups on someone else's owl (three in total). Athena HATED the entire premise of health checkups. For the most part, she was left in her mew except for the one day a week we had to clean and give her the checkup. Thursdays, her cleaning/health checkup day, she knew. You knew it was bad if you entered and she immediately flew from her front perch to her back perch. Some days she would just clack excessively and then fly back. Either way, she was not a fan of stepping up, understandably so considering her past history. It takes about 20 minutes to slowly make your way to the back portion of her mew, which was hell when it was icy and -20 outside. I slipped twice in her mew, bruising my backside extensively, cracking the cover of my phone, and losing her trust. I hated myself for that last part. When on her swinging perch, Athena would usually step up pretty well. Anywhere else and you were in for a treat. Although this part was usually a bit of a circus and unfortunately a necessity (if we could, we would have just left her and allowed her to have a choice every time she needed to come out, but it is not so), once inside of our "rehab room" where we do health checkups, she would calm. She would still hunch (little hunchback was one of her nicknames), but she would take foot from me willingly and, most of the time, allow me to check her feet and beak without biting (too hard). She allowed me to swab foot care products to prevent her terrible bumblefoot, and the wildlife coordinator told me her feet looked better than they ever have in the past. Halfway through the year, he told all the wildlife staff that she had broken none of her tail feathers because we had been handling her correctly, as well as recovering from bates (heated and dramatic shows of throwing oneself off the glove) in a precise manner. I could not have been prouder. Athena was difficult, but a joy to work with and know that I could handle a real, difficult animal.

Remi, Remington, or Remoraid, as I liked to call him, is a younger Barred Owl than Athena residing in Wisconsin. His story is slightly more terrifying than Athena's, which is that she was hit by a car (still pretty terrifying). Remi was living in a tree cavity with his other siblings when they were tiny nestlings when someone decided to cut down the tree. They sawed right through the middle of Remi's cavity, and Remi miraculously survived. However, the rest of his siblings were beheaded. Remi's small stature saved him, though the very top of his head was cut off, leaving him prone to cold and infections. He now has a large scare on the very top of his head where no feathers will grow. He is also rather flighty, a trait I think exists in most Barred Owls (as they are not top predators, such as the Great Horned), but was much more cooperative than Athena. My favorite quality about Remi was how talkative he was. Whenever he saw his favorite person, a member of the rehab staff, he would "talk" in an exaggerated fashion. He would perform the usual barred owl "who cooks for you", but mostly just the "whoooo" portion, trilling extensively and in different pitches. It was adorable. If he became too footy on glove, or seemed to be getting stressed, I sung No Doubt's "Don't Speak" to him, repeating, "Hu-ush, Darling" to him in song. I think it calmed him, but everyone else said I was crazy. Remi is a cutie-patootie.

Fonzie the Great Horned Owl

Great Horned Owls are majestic as fuck, don't even try to argue otherwise. Many people don't think an owl is an owl unless it has the iconic feather tufts, Great Horneds are so popular in society. Great Horned Owls, or the tigers of the woods, can be incredibly angry or incredibly sweet. Angry actually probably isn't a great describing word, more like "stressed but pretentious". At the aviary, where I worked two days a week in the school year and almost any day I could during the summer, we had two GHOWs, Barney and Winky. I never handled one of them, but I was allowed to clean in with them in my second year, which was a magical experience. Barney was an imprint, so he constantly hooted at me, trying to gossip and express his feelings to me, one of his people. In Minnesota, the residential GHOW was Cleo, named such because he was at first thought to be a girl due to his large size. Turns out, he is just a huge boy. Cleo was brought up on the same training regimine as Athena, meaning he was scared to death of gloved hands coming near him. Not only that, but the previous year's interns used to go into his mew and take pictures of him mere inches away from his face. While my photos may look like they are close-up, they are definitely from a distance with a zoom lense. I want to respect the animal's space, which the staff prior to myself did not. This had made Cleo's trust in humans faulty, at best. Thus, we had to work up to reestablishing a bond. With months of work, he stopped hissing and clacking (as much) when we walked past his door, or when we came in to change his water. He still got upset when we had to handle him for cleaning or programs, but for the most part he was gaining trust back with the world. During the summer, I became his primary trainer. I had never trained such a large bird before, and was nervous and excited at the same time. We most started out with even more trust building, having him eat in front of me as the day turned into twilight outside. I did not get much further than that, only having three months to establish this trust, but this allowed his next trainer to surpass that step even faster than he had the year before. Now he is doing great with step-ups, and that is what truly counts.

Fonzie, who this picture is actually of, is an imprint. Imprinted owls are completely different from either owls brought in from the wild or owls that are simply raised in captivity. They think they are a human, too. THEY THINK THEY'RE PEOPLE (I would screech as I saw a pigeon use a crosswalk or Storm sit on a chair). Fonzie was adorable because of his constant desire for interaction with us; as we walked past his mew he would hoot and we would gather next to the wooden planks separating us and coo, "Hi Fonzie!!" and he would hoot to us in greeting. We used him in every program, since he was so great on the glove and incredibly talkative. We would joke that he was looking for a girlfriend and that everyone in the audience was looking pretty cute to him, which would earn twitters of laughter from the group. My favorite moment with Fonzie was when I took him out of his box after a program and was about to put him back. It was beginning to grow dark as September melted into October, and right outside his mew I bent down and kissed him on his head. He hooted in response. I nuzzled one of his feather tufts, undid his equipment, and let him fly silently to his perch. Having such connections with incredible predators is exhilarating and makes me feel like I could soar.

Saw-Whet Owls

The last owl I'll talk about on this Superb Owl Sunday is the Northern Saw-Whet Owl. Saw-Whets are incredibly tiny (waaaay tinier than Storm or even my little Cica Bean), and we are often asked if they can be purchased as pets at education programs, due to their adorable nature. The answer is NO, they are wild animals. But they look like little stuffed animals, which really doesn't help our case. These particular Saw-Whets are part of the wild trio brought in just a couple of weeks before I left, all of them suffering different injuries they needed to heal from. All of them can be released, they are simply being kept safe in captivity as they heal. Saw-Whets are important to me for two reasons: the first is they introduced me to the world of animal training "in the beginning" (when I was 16) and the second is they taught me that I need to be more careful when I surround myself with such predators (ignore my post about nuzzling Fonzie, THAT WAS DIFFERENT OKAY). While working at the aviary with the bird show, it underwent a major staff change. Our new bird show director was from the more "professional" world of animal training, right as it was just becoming the norm was other animal trainers to use clicker training, or operant conditioning (rather than just marine mammal trainers). She decided each volunteer would receive a different bird to train, so we could focus on that one animal and learn the jargon and scientific processes behind it. We requested the birds we wanted, ranking the top three. I received Silva (pronounced Silwa, which means woodland in latin), the Saw-Whet. I had asked for Aurora over her, but was thrilled to have her, as she was super tiny and I am obsessed with tiny things (as I've said before). It might seem that I have a penchant for asking for things that I am automatically denied, but honestly I feel blessed to have worked with these tiny owls. Small owl training is actually an incredibly difficult job, as I've learned from talking to people at the Minnesota Raptor Center. Many people don't even attempt to train them, simply forcing them to step-up and do programs. However, as with all things it is better to train using positive reinforcement. I was introduced to this process with Silva. She was a brand new recruit, so I hand-fed her all her food to build trust with her, spending hours out in the amphitheater with our birds all perched on our gloves, laps, or the grass surrounding us. Aurora loved perching on her volunteer's shoe. We did a show with our birds at the end of the summer to show off our skills as handlers and public speakers, a small show that mostly our family and friends attended. One of my friends in charge of the music had to cut a song off abruptly in the middle during the opening due to it extending past its allotted time, immediately plunging "Breathless" by the Corrs into a classical ballad. It still makes me laugh to think about it. I made a special mix of "Night on Bald Mountain" that merged effortlessly into "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows" by Lesley Gore. I talked about how the next bird would possibly induce night terrors in the audience and if anyone was pregnant or prone to peeing their pants, they should leave the theater, as soon as I had Silva step up onto my hand from offstage, the song changed into "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows", which made all our parents chuckle, even though they all knew me and my bird.

I owe a lot to every single one of these birds. I love each and every one of them dearly, and owls have thus far shaped my career. I have just barely trained a non-owl bird of prey (a beautiful male Peregrine Falcon), and now feel ready for a career in which I could train a multitude of different species and be incredibly happy doing so. I thought I couldn't be an animal trainer for so long due to people's opinions that didn't matter, and the thought process that it wasn't a "real job". Turns out, it is. And it's what I'm passionate about.

Thank you, owls. This truly was a Superb Owl Sunday.

(for reals though, the Broncos got their asses handed to them on a PLATTER. I just couldn't stop laughing. I'm pretty sure Peyton Manning literally wiped a tear from his eye during one of the shots. Also, Augar Buzzard present on the field, AWESOME!)