Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

The ghost of Hedwig, Harry Potter’s faithful friend, has arrived in Red Bud. The Snowy Owl is hanging around Pumpkin Blossom Hill, just east of town along Highway 154.

Dan Peck of Sparta was heading home Thursday afternoon (Jan. 26, 2012) when he noticed an unusual white owl-looking bird on a power pole. He called IDNR district wildlife biologist Brian Mahan to see if he knew what it could be. Brian alerted Carl and Pen DauBach, volunteers with Clifftop, a conservation organization and land trust active in Monroe, St. Clair and Randolph Counties. Fearing that sunset might prevent an accurate observation record, the DauBachs called Red Bud Master Naturalist and Clifftop volunteer Jim Gilpatrick. All converged on Blossom Hill at sunset to behold the region’s first Snowy Owl sighting in more than three decades. Early Friday morning, Clifftop board member and professional photographer Tom Rollins captured the very soul of the majestic visitor in this stunning image.

Snowy Owls live and breed along the Arctic Circle in the tundra of northernmost Canada. Every so often the owls disburse far from their normal winter range. These “irruption” events, Clifftop’s Carl DauBach said, are due to uncertain reasons, “perhaps an increase in owl numbers, or a decrease in available food sources, or a combination of these and other factors.”

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

While their winter range does extend into the northern U.S., every few winters, Snowy Owls move much further south. Usually single birds, such as the one in Randolph County, are seen.

This winter’s Snowy Owl irruption has been one for the history books. The sheer number birds and the wide range of sightings makes this irruption an amazing phenomenon. A dozen sightings have occurred in Illinois, 40 in Missouri, 90 in Kansas, and single Snowy even made its way to Hawaii. On Friday, another Snowy was found in Pulaski County at the southern tip of Illinois.

Previous Snowy Owl records for our part of Illinois have been few and far between: Union County in 1980 and Franklin County in 1975 and 1992.  And, curiously or coincidentally, a Snowy Owl stayed in downtown Red Bud for a couple of days in March 1976. The North County News edition of March 18, 1976, noted that the bird – described first as looking like as “one big pigeon,” — stayed in town for a full weekend.

Perhaps pigeons were what the 1976 owl was looking for, as Snowy Owls in residential areas often will hunt and feed on pigeons: active and agile hunters, and so maneuverable in flight skills, these owls can and do hunt birds. Their normal diet in their high Arctic home is 90 percent lemmings, members of the rodent family related to voles and muskrats. Unlike most owls, Snowy Owls often are active during the day, choosing a high perch to scan for potential prey, then quickly swooping down, talons extended, to catch a meal.

Carl DauBach noted that the Randolph County bird is an adult, probably a female, “Only the very oldest males have nearly pure white feathering and this bird shows some brown flecking on the feathers. A juvenile bird would have fairly heavy brown streaking and flecking mixed in with the white plumage,” he said. The inclusion of so many adult birds is yet another unusual factor in this year’s unusual irruption event.

Getting food is obviously on the mind of the Snowy near Red Bud as observers noted the bird’s foraging behavior. While visitors may admire the beauty and wonder at the rarity the welfare of this unusual visitor from the high north deserves respect, and Snowy Owls, like all birds, should not be disturbed, harassed, or forced into unnessary flight for any reason. “This bird is here because it’s hungry and needs to find food. It doesn’t need any human-created stress,” DauBach noted.

Hedwig would approve and, maybe, come back for yet another visit.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands. 

Versions of this article and excerpts from it appeared in the February 2 2012 edition of the North County News and in the February 8 2012 edition of the Republic-Times, and in the Spring 2012 edition of Illinois Audubon Magazine. Additional news coverage appeared in the February 5 2012 edition of the Belleville News-Democrat.

To read more about owls and view additional photographs, please see: Something to Hoot About: Owls.

To read about providing homes for Barn Owls and view additional photographs, please see: Barn Owls in Search of Homes.

A Great-horned Owl, Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Owls enjoy our special fascination. Perhaps it’s because they are a caricature of us: with upright, sometimes cuddly-looking, vertical posture, big, cheeky and expressive faces with large, emotive eyes, and cute little ears. But they really are the bird version of a wolf in sheep’s clothing: like a cat with wings, they are skillful predators designed for darkness.

Owls command the night. They are the second shift in a rodent’s worst nightmare, taking over the daytime responsibilities of raptors (hawks and falcons) to hunt mice, rats, voles and moles, and other small mammals, and not give a hoot in the process.

Several evolutionary biological adaptations have made owls the masters and mistresses of low-and-no light hunting. Foremost is the position of an owl’s eyes. Their large eyes, located forward on their faces, with beaks curved downward so as to not obstruct vision, gives them a wide, overlapped sight and field of view. It’s called binocular vision and is a measure of how much each eye can see the same area. Owls have about a 120-degree binocular field of view. For comparison, humans have about a 140-degree binocular field of view.

Eastern Screech-Owl, Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Equally important is the ability to see three-dimensionally (stereoscopic vision) for enhanced depth perception. Good stereoscopic vision is very dependent on how far apart eyes are set on a head. The flat, disk-like face of an owl allows for a wide separation between the eyes, and, as a result, about 70% of an owl’s field of view is seen stereoscopically; again similar to the stereoscopic ability of a human.

But good eyesight at night is also dependent on how an eye is constructed. An owl retina contains numerous rod-shaped photoreceptors enabling acute low-light vision, and the larger owl eye means a larger cornea, lens, and muscular iris to adjust the pupil to a wide range of limited light conditions. Good night vision alone, however, is not the only reason for an owl’s hunting prowess.

Owls have stupendous hearing. They have enormous ear openings concealed behind the edges of their facial disks. The tufted “ears” on several species of owls, including our local Great Horned Owls, are not ears and have nothing to do with hearing–the tufts are used to signal moods: if held vertically the owl is happy, if held horizontally, it’s a sign the bird is crabby.

Owls can adjust the shape of their large ear aperture — like us cupping our hands behind our ears to hear better – by moving cartilage around the ears’ opening. Owls can even direct their hearing attention backwards. Studies have shown that owls have particularly astute hearing for higher frequencies, such as a squeaking mouse or the rustlings of a scurrying vole.

Silent and secretive flight adds to an owl’s lethal hunting tool kit.  An owl can appear like an apparition out of nowhere and disappear in a heartbeat, much to the chagrin of targeted prey. Highly camouflaged plumage and an aerodynamic physique combine to make a hunting owl truly stealthy.

An owl’s short and wide wings, coupled with small body weight, make them remarkably maneuverable fliers. Our region’s Great Horned Owl for example, is two feet tall and has a five-foot wingspan, but only weighs five pounds. And, unlike all other birds, you cannot hear the wing beats of an owl on the prowl. The furtiveness of silent flight is made possible by finely fringe-edged pinion feathers that are covered with velvet pile thus dampening all sound of the wings moving through air.

A Barn Owl, Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Because of owls’ clandestine behavior, and the fact that they go to work after we’ve gone to bed, most folks know very little about owls.

Five species of owls regularly occur in southwestern Illinois.. Four of the species are year-round residents. Barred Owls, rich baritone hooters, are common throughout the area. Great Horned Owls, the largest owl in our region, can be found primarily in our deep woodlands. Eastern Screech-Owls, small, Robin-sized birds, frequent a variety of habitats. And, increasingly hard-to-find Barn Owls, ghostly-appearing with heart-shaped white faces, prefer open fields and grass lands.

Short-Eared Owls are wintertime-only visitors to our area. Although fewer in numbers than our year-round residents, they can be easier to spot. They prefer to hunt in the twilight of dusk or dawn, and will sometimes even hunt in broad daylight. Easily mistaken for a Northern Harrier (Marsh Hawk), they buoyantly cruise and hover over open farm grounds and grass lands.

Three additional owl species, from the far north country, will occasionally and rarely visit our region in winter: Long-Eared Owls, Northern Saw-whet Owls and the beautiful Snowy Owls, made famous recently by Hedwig, Harry Potter’s companion and familiar in the popular book and movie series. A well-remembered Snowy hung out in downtown Red Bud for a couple of days in March 1976; this year a Snowy Owl stayed near Red Bud for nearly a month (see link to the related CLIFFnotes article, below). And, a vagrant Burrowing Owl, from the American Southwest, was spotted near Fish Lake in Monroe County in May of 2010.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography.

Clifftop, Kaskaskia Valley Audubon Society, and the Monroe County Extension Service co-hosted a program as a part of the “Meet the Neighbors” natural history seminar series on Saturday, February 11th. Treehouse Wildlife Center presented a program on the natural history, habits and habitats of our owl neighbors at the Monroe County Annex, 901 Illinois St., in Waterloo, from 3 to 5 PM.  Live owls  assisted with the program.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands. 

A version of this article appeared in the January 20, 2012 edition of the Monroe County Independent.

© 2012 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

To read about and view photos of a Snowy Owl in our area, please look at: The Ghost of Hedwig.

To read about and view photos of creating new homes for Barn Owls, please look at Barn Owls in Search of Homes.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Spring has already arrived in the wooded bluff lands of Monroe and Randolph Counties. High above Bluff Road, on the limestone ledges of the bluffs’ escarpment, whitlow grass is blooming. A little plant, hairy-stemmed, with tiny, white, four-petaled flowers, whitlow grass really isn’t a grass, but a member of the mustard family. It is a rare plant found only on the bluffs in southwestern Illinois. In order to survive on the harsh and windy bluff face, whitlow grass has developed a clever life-cycle. Its seeds germinate in fall; it grows over the winter and flowers in February; it then produces new seeds and dies back before summer.  It’s called whitlow grass because Native Americans and early settlers used it as a medicinal remedy for whitlows — sores under finger or toenails.

Near the end of February, if we get a few warmer days, harbinger-of-spring will begin to bloom. Also called pepper-and-salt, the plant is found throughout the moist, wooded slopes and ravines of the bluffs. A small, delicate plant, with fern-like leaves, it is a member of the parsley family. The white flowers are in clusters at the ends of long stems and have deep dark reddish anthers. Native Americans ate the plant’s bulbs.

John Triana, Regional Water Authority, Bugwood.org

Great-horned owls, like whitlow grass, also have a unique reproductive strategy. Because young fledgling owls have a very long, 3-4 month, dependency on their parents to learn hunting skills, adult great-horned owls court and breed in the winter. So courting begins in January, egg incubation is usually in February, and fledgling training begins in March. During this time, our bluffs resound with the mellow “hoo” notes, in rhythmic succession, of great-horned mates starting new families. Great-horned owls are also oftenassociated with red-tailed hawks. Every winter the owls use abandoned red-tailed hawk nests for breeding, and every spring the red-tails use untaken previous nests or simply build new ones. Since both owls and hawks are year-round residents of the bluffs and establish permanent territories here, they live side-by-side, with the great-horned owls ruling the night skies and the red-tailed hawks ruling the daylight.

Scott Ballard, Illinois Department of Natural Resoures

Spring peepers and wood frogs are the first frogs to breed in our bluffs, usually starting by late February. Both, like many frogs, have a kind of antifreeze in their blood, and can withstand being totally frozen in the soil of their winter burrows. The earliest spring rains and temperatures above 50 F awaken both to breeding. Spring peepers are about 1” long and collect in the grasses andbushes around our numerous sinkhole ponds to breed. Their clear, high-pitched “peeps,” about one per second, are usually the first calls of spring. Wood frogs, more secretive and harder to hear, are 1.5”-2” long, and breed in small woodland ponds, puddles or vernal pools. They live and hide in forest leaf litter. Their breeding calls are a soft, rapid clucking or quacking sound, much like a duck.

Woodcocks will be returning to our bluff lands in late February. Often called timberdoodles by hunters, they are dry-land shorebirds. Wintering in southern states, they are one of the earliest migrant arrivals. Male woodcocks perform remarkable twilight courtship flights called ‘sky dances.’  Beginning about 45 minutes before sunrise and a half hour after sunset, the males will launch spiraling ascents to 200 hundred feet while producing a rising-pitch trill sound with their wing tips. They then dive back in a zigzag, falling-leaf-like descent to the ground, all the time vocalizing “chip-chip-chip.”  Males may make ten or twenty of these

60 second flights in a row. It’s really a sight to see and hear.

Thoughts on spring should never overlook our beautiful back yard bird menagerie.

If you live in the bluffs, the forest edge is never far away. And, if you regularly feed birds over the winter, there are a dozen or so loyal species that routinely grace your feeders. Cardinals or redbirds, which everybody recognizes, are always the most prevalent. Next come the noisy and pranksterish blue jays. They are important caretakers of our woods. Famous for hoarding and stashing acorns, nuts and seeds in the woods during winter and then forgetting about it, they contribute greatly to new seedling growth. Three of our five native species of woodpeckers are common at our feeding stations, especially if you put out suet. Downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers were all considered sacred by local native Americans; they believed the woodpeckers would keep them safe from lightening. Chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches are daily visitors. And, we must not forget the goldfinches or “wild canaries.” They are easy to overlook when in their drab, brown-little-bird winter plumage. They are so dependent on thistles and weed seeds and chaff for summer food and nesting materials that they are among the last to breed in our area, waiting to late summer. Their practice is a gift for us, because from March to summer, they molt into their golder and golder breeding plumage.

All of the above bird species are yearlong residents of the bluffs. Five additional species, common at our winter back yard feeders, will soon migrate. White-throated sparrows, fox sparrows, tree sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos will all depart for their breeding ranges in Canada. But all will be back next fall, especially the juncos, the ‘snowbirds’ who return to the same yard, year after year. We just have to remember to feed the birds.

CLIFFTOP, a local, nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving & protecting our bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the February 7 2007 edition of the Monroe County Clarion

© 2007 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.