Questions About Owls

Factual Questions
21

Nope, they can do some tricky swoops but that’s not really flying.

Barn owls are really pretty small. I don’t know much about their carrying capacity as they’re not used in falconry and I work with them in an indoor research setting. The thing is, they mostly eat mice and thus don’t have much need to lift and carry any great amount of weight. Great Horned Owls on the other hand are extremely powerful and have a massive wingspan at 60". Their lifting capacity is such that they can lift two or three times their body weight in a vertical lift off the ground. This is a tremendous feat compared to diurnal raptors, which can be discouraged from carrying prey with one or two pound weighted lures.

About like a duck’s does, I imagine.

Most falconers will say “not very”. Owls are not terribly useful in falconry as they have a tendency to not cooperate in any way at all. Part of the problem is that their hunting style is completely different than diurnal raptors, so almost certainly training methods and handling come in to play here to one extent or another. There are only a very few (maybe one or two that I’m familiar with) falconers using GHOs with any success. The other thing is that one of the basic tenants of falconry is choosing a bird that meshes extremely well with the type of hunting you can provide, and most owls for various reasons just aren’t useful for the types of game and quarry most humans want to hunt. Anyway the general thought in falconry circles is that owls are stupid, but I’m convinced that’s not really the case so much as being extremely well adapted for what they do, and too few falconers willing or interested in working within their scope.

As opposed to…? Owls on the ground will look up at me standing over them, if that’s what you’re asking.

22

Nitpick: you mean “tenets”. Awesome post about falconry, though. Do you know anyone who uses ospreys for seaside falconry?

23

As opposed to a burro owl, which is a bird that doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground. :stuck_out_tongue:

24

Some kind of stand-up comedy routine, isn’t it? :slight_smile:

25

Thanks for the nit being picked! I did actually know that, just missed it on preview. :p. Thanks for the complement, though I’m naught but an apprentice and thus my knowledge, such as it is, is extremely limited.
Nope, ospreys are illegal for falconry. Even if they weren’t, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to train them.
The idea in falconry is that you’ve got to convince the bird that it eats better with your help than without it. The bird can catch more and bigger prey with you. One of the problems you need to overcome is the bird’s inclination to go for small prey it can pick up and fly off with up into the next tree over, eat 'til it’s stuffed, then forget you exist and fly off into the wild blue yonder. There are various ways to overcome this, but all rely on the bird taking down something fairly large and cumbersome, and staying with the quarry* until you get there. Since an osprey by nature has to pick up its prey and fly off with it --can’t go to ground on water-- and you are pretty near helpless in being able to flush game for it or assist it in any way, an osprey really has no use for a falconer.

On the other hand, I do know of a person who uses a bald eagle for land hunting.

*Game = ducks, pheasants, grouse. Quarry = everything else.

26

Please replace “game” with “quarry” in the last line. I meant it in a hypothetical sense, but realized after the window that the point is you can’t flush fish. :smack:
Also, there’s an extra . in there somewhere.
Man, I forgot posting in GQ gives me hives.

27

I’m sure there’s a reference or witcrack whooshing me here, but actually, at face value, owls actually aren’t as they seem. They’re really quite scrawny things with very voluminous feathers. They’re not the tubby cylindrical things they seem to be.

28

Some facts about Owls:

Their feathers are frayed meaning there is no sound when they fly - obviously aids in predation.

The eastern Great Horned Owl is invariably the top of the food chain in New England.

They cannot turn their head all the way around . About 300 degrees I think…

I’ve witnessed a Great horned owl prey on a red tail hawk.

Great Horneds usually take over a next of a hawk or osprey…fledge their young then leave before the other bird comes back.

29

It’s a Twin Peaks reference.

30

What about “Care of Magical Creatures”?

31

Darwin’s Finch and NajaNivea have done an excellent job upthread. For my 2 cents I’ll note that in my experience owls are not dramatically different from other birds of prey when it comes to an evaluation of “intelligence”. But that is a slippery concept.

Birds of prey are highly specialized. (There are marked differences between species, but each individually is highly adapted physiologically and behaviorally.) And they are the opposite of gregarious. (OK, a couple of hawk species sometimes appear to hunt cooperatively.) I suspect it is this high degree of specialization that has “cost” them in the intelligence department, rather than a simple limitation on brain size. They are supremely skilled at what (each of them) do, but have dramatically limited ability to change their behaviors. They seem to learn poorly, if at all.

NajaNivea refers to this in describing falconry hunting. The bird doesn’t seek out then kill and retrieve prey for the human “master”. It certainly doesn’t fetch like a dog. After a kill, the human is responsible for catching up with the bird and enticing it back onto “the fist” before it fills its belly and goes on about its life elsewhere. No matter how well “trained” the bird, this remains the system. Falconry merely acclimates the bird to human contact and perhaps the bird (some of them, anyway) is conditioned to expect prey to flush in the vicinity of humans. But even with that, their patience is limited; if you don’t flush something pretty quick, you’d better get out a lure and bring your bird back, else it is likely to head for happier hunting over the horizon. Most learning in falconry is done by the falconer, not the birds.

While not used for falconry, we have several owls of several species that will fly aggressively to a handler for food. In this they are little different from our hawks, falcons, and eagles. Perhaps they could be hunted. But as noted above, typical owl predation is different. Small animals are stealthily ambushed as they creep along the forest floor. This differs from typical falconry and the wild techniques of hawks, falcons, and eagles, where the prey (bird or mammal) is rapidly and visibly fleeing, enticing pursuit. “The chase” is not an owl’s strong suit.

As noted upthread, the Corvids (crows, jays, etc.) are considered to be “intelligent” as are many Psitacines (parrots). Both of these groups are highly social, and both are more generalists than specialists. (Apologies for generalizing here myself, but the exceptions are not too numerous.) I suspect that the necessity of interacting in a constantly changing manner, both with other individuals and with a variable external environment, contributes to what we see as “intelligence”.

If the ability to interact with and learn from a highly variable environment is indeed intelligence, then none of the birds of prey display much of it.

32

GHOs are a major source of concern, particularly when hunting around twilight. My sponsor used to fly a goshawk, and late one evening the bird went to ground with quarry rather deep in the junipers where everything kind of starts to look the same. She found the hawk after a bit of a search on the ground with prey. About ten feet up directly over the gos was a GHO peering down. Another few seconds and both gos and prey would have been a tidy haul for the owl.
GHOs are serious owls.

I just ran into my barn owl PI and asked him about their carrying capacity. He says his range from about 400g-700g absolute max, and that in the wild they might go after squirrels or rats, which would be about comperable in weight and could probably carry these for a short distance. Remember though that the larger the game, the more difficult the kill, the more energy expended, and the higher the risk for injury. Squirrels in particular are extremely tough to kill and squirrel hawking is considered a bit of a daredevil sport, as they can cause serious injury including loss of talons even to a hefty red tail. Anyway the point is, they probably can carry close to their own body weight for a very short period, but wouldn’t have much reason to do so on a regular basis and in truth will tend to avoid prey that large. Interestingly enough, the older and more experienced the bird, the smaller the prey typically caught. Small prey are safer and pose less risk of injury, but are generally faster and more maneuverable, harder to catch.

33

As someone who’s owned a fishtank for 15 years, I assure you that you can. Otherwise it would be hard to get rid of the dead ones.

34

After reading the various posts about the owl’s lack of intelligence, all I can say is that I am now extremely depressed about the state of higher education in this country.

35

270 degrees.

36

Perhaps if we had 14 neck bones instead of seven, we could do this too!

37

Owl say!

38

Why do people put wooden owls on their roofs?

And why do people in America say the “wise old owl,” while be in other places people consider owls evil?

39

To scare away the wooden pigeons.

Wooden you?

40

That woodn’t work.