There are Missouri owls who can hear the heartbeat of a mouse up to 6 inches underground, while others can carry up to four times their weight and some have up to 14 different calls, some of which sound like human screams.
These are just a few of the items shared recently with visitors who attended an event with Dickerson Park Zoo staff, hosted at the Bill Emerson Memorial Visitor Center.
Zookeeper Todd Robitsch brought three native Missouri owls to the visitor center. The Dickerson Park Zoo has four owls native to Missouri. The state has eight owl species total, with five that stay in Missouri all year long and three that transition between seasons, he shared Saturday. There are between 230 and 240 owl species in the world. In North America, there are 18 different species of owls.
The three transitory owls are snowy owls, long eared owls and short eared owls. These can best be viewed in the winter months, Robitsch said. The five year-round owls are barn owls, great horned owls, barred owls, eastern screech owls, and Northern saw-whet owls.
Owls are part of the raptor family. Raptors include eagles, hawks, falcons, kites and owls.
Raptors are identified by their excellent eyesight and powerful talons, which are made of keratin to protect the bone underneath. Female raptors are much larger than the males, making it easier to differentiate between the two. Unlike songbird species, most raptors do not express these traits through feather color.
The Dickerson Park Zoo staff is one of the few in the nation that is personally allowed to handle raptors and give informative events, Robitsch said. Keepers have to build their relationships with the birds and that can usually take up to a year, with a lot of work. One main way to build a relationship is by cleaning the birds’ habitats and feeding them daily. Raptors are very dangerous birds and are to be handled with caution and experience.
Owls can use their hearing alone to hunt, Robitsch shared.
The Barn Owl can hear the heartbeat of a mouse that is 6 inches underground. Along with exceptional hearing, owls’ eyesight is outstanding, he told visitors. Unlike humans who have circular eyes, owls have cone-shaped eyes that take up 70% of their head for more in-depth sight.
Due to the owls having cone-shaped eyes, their eyes cannot move like humans. Owls have to use their heads and turn to see. Owls can rotate their heads 270 degrees. Due to the extreme turns in their neck, owls have blood reservoirs under their chins that supply blood to their brains as they look around.
Owls can turn their heads to such a degree because their necks are made up of 14 vertebrae that are coiled like a spring, Robitsch said. That is double what most mammals, including humans, have.
During the event at the visitor center, Robitsch first introduced the group to Missouri’s barred owl named Bart. Barred owls can live up to 20 years old, and Bart is a little past his lifespan due to living in captivity. Barred owls get their name because their feathers look like bars going down their body. They use their color to camouflage themselves in their trees and blend in with the tree bark. Barred owls’ favorite diet is crawfish.
If you live near a river or creek, you’ve probably seen these owls in action, Robitsch said. Many people will mistake a barred owl for a barn owl because of their facial features. Like barn owls, barred owls have facial disks that outline their face. These disks aren’t ears, but are movable feathers that act like acoustics to funnel in sound.
The next owl that was introduced was the Eastern screech owl. These owls have feathers on their heads that most people mistake for ears. They are not ears, but are tufts of feathers used for camouflage, Robitsch explained.
There are three different phases in these owls. Phases are colors of the feathers. There is a gray phase, brown phase and a red phase. The phases all depend on what they’re eating. If the owls’ diet is mainly insects, the feathers will be red. If the owls’ diet is mainly mammals, the feathers will be gray. If the owls consume equally both, the feathers will be brown.
These owls are very common in Missouri and can be extremely camouflaged. Basically, if you’ve seen a tree, you’ve walked right underneath one of these owls, Robitsch said.
The Eastern screech owl will turn sideways, make itself skinny, and close its eyes to blend in with the trees. If you didn’t know the owl was already there, you’d never known once they went camouflaged, he explained, adding if caught, the owl will actually play dead just like an opossum will do.
Eastern screech owls are nocturnal, but can alternate that performance if a predator moves into the area. The Eastern screech owls mate for life. However, if something happens to their mate, they won’t spend the rest of their life alone, but rather find a new mate. The owls will lay about one to three eggs per year.
Once the babies are grown and ready to leave the nest, the mother will actually leave first and make dad responsible for the young. Dad of course doesn’t like that idea, Robitsch said, so he will stop cleaning the nest, giving the message to the babies that it’s time to fly.
The last owl that was introduced was a barn owl named Silo.
Barn owls actually started to dissipate in Missouri because barns were no longer being built and were being torn down, Robitsch said.
However, farmers agreed to help by building nesting boxes to put in trees.
Residents can help the population of barn owls and have nesting boxes put in trees at home, but Robitsch recommended doing research and having proper material or simply asking a conservationist what to do.
Barn owls have extreme force with their talons. They are quick and clean when killing prey and their wings are much longer than their body, Robitsch said, allowing them to hover in the air and listen for sounds while searching for food.
Barn owls can be very nervous birds. They tend to sway back and forth, or dancing as most people would call it, and move constantly when they are not comfortable. Unlike most raptors, barn owls will lay up to 12 eggs, three times per year. Of course, the number of eggs depends on the diet of the bird. The male owl will care for the female while she sits on the nest with the eggs.
Barn owls also have 14 different calls and a lot of them resemble screaming. People have mistaken barn owls as ghosts if they’re near a cemetery at night because of the sounds they make and also because they have white feathers, Robitsch said.
Robitsch also discussed the great horned owl that is at the Dickerson Park Zoo. Unfortunately, the owl is not trained just yet, so it was not safe to bring to the event, he said.
The great horned owl is the biggest owl in Missouri. They are also known as the “flying tiger” because nothing messes with the great horned owl, not even the majestic bald eagles, Robitsch said. Great horned owls have massive chest muscles that allow them to carry prey four times their weight, while eagles can only carry about a quarter of their weight.
Great horned owls’ favorite food to eat is skunks. They are not affected by the smell or the spray that skunks produce, Robitsch said. Great horned owls will bury their food in the winter and go to retrieve it later, thawing the food out by sitting on it in the nest like they would their eggs. These owls can also climb trees using their beaks and talons. Robitsch said if you see a baby on the ground, try not to retrieve it and let it climb back up on its own. Of course, if it is an emergency situation, first call your local conservationist for information and instructions, he explained.