Owl Calling

(This column appeared in the November 11, 1996 Buffalo News.)

   Two of my friends, Dick Collins and Chuck Rosenberg, have each mastered the 
whistled call of the screech owl. They can warble up these small raptors 
wherever they are to be found. For example, one night in Reinstein Woods Jeff 
Liddle and I listened and watched as Chuck called into our flashlight beams an 
unbelievable half dozen of these normally shy birds. Among them were screech 
owls of both color phases: red and gray.

   For bird watchers the ability to imitate the screech owl's eerie notes has 
an additional payoff. During daylight hours the same sounds attract small 
songbirds like chickadees, kinglets, and warblers who seek to pester their 
enemy when the owl's sensitive nighttime vision is diminished by stronger 
light.  The simulated call is even better in its magnetic effect on these tiny 
birds than spishing -- making librarian-like shushing sounds -- or rotating 
one of those Audubon squeaking devices that makes a noise too much like 
running fingernails down a chalkboard.

   Mimicking that screech owl call is an ability I wish I had. I have tried 
all my life to capture its oddly wavering quality, never with any success. 
Somehow your tongue has to play the role of the ball in a referee's whistle 
and I simply cannot bounce mine around the right way. Even as I type this I 
find myself trying once again and producing still more of my usual less than 
satisfactory twittering noises. When I do this in the woods, all I am able to 
accomplish is giggling among my companions. And whether the owls join in this 
giggling or not, they never approach us.

   As a substitute for a personal whistle, I have occasionally used taped 
screech owl calls. Once on a dark midwinter night I tried this technique near 
the Iroquois Wildlife Refuge. A man parked alone on a remote road with a 
recorder making strange noises from the roof of his car did not make much 
sense to the policeman who pulled up beside me. He finally drove off shaking 
his head.

   Other owl calls are easier to imitate. Even I can interrogate the great 
horned owl's six hoots -- Who-who-who? Who-who-who? --or the barred owl's 
southern inflected eight hoots -- Who hoots for you? Who hoots for you-all? -- 
that last note trailing off to a kind of croak. I have had some success 
calling up these large and violent birds out of the deep woods, but it really 
takes the barrel chest of an opera singer to do them justice.

   And Julio de la Torre is just such a man. This remarkable ornithologist, 
former president of New York City's Linnaean Society, international editor and 
translator, and author of the splendid book, "Owls: Their Life and Behavior," 
has for years served as leading basso of the Italian Center Opera Repertory 
Group in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He has taken thousands of people on 
nighttime hikes on which he calls up owls and he has even sung to them, 
claiming they prefer the devil's arias from Gounod's "Faust" and Boito's 
"Mefistofele."

   At 3:00 this coming Sunday at the Buffalo Museum of Science, Mr. de la 
Torre will recount some of his experiences with the 19 North American owl 
species. His talk is part of the annual series honoring George E. Hayes, past 
museum president and founder of its first endowment. There is no admission 
charge.

   Mr. de la Torre has promised to share slides, recordings, imitations, and 
anecdotes. We might even expect an opera tune or two.

   I only wish he could also teach me how to whistle that elusive screech owl 
call.