Hilton Jr., B. 1991. Mythical, mystical owls. South Carolina Wildlife 38(6):32-39.

(Note: The draft below was submitted to South Carolina Wildlife magazine; the article that actually appeared in print may have been edited.)

The Owl. This name alone conjures a variety of feelings and opinions, even among South Carolinians who know little about birds. Folks who can't tell a sparrow from a chickadee can recognize owls, and most people recall something interesting about owl natural history. Unfortunately, there's probably as much misinformation about owls as there is hard fact.

Ornithologists agree that owls--intelligent or not--are among the most poorly studied birds, in part because they are nocturnal and humans are day creatures. Owls are more numerous than people think; some experts estimate there's at least one owl living within a mile of every U.S. resident. However, since most owl sightings are chance views of midnight birds gliding past headlights on lonesome country roads, only avid owl watchers and chronic insomniacs can expect to spot more than a few species.

Even if owls weren't so elusive and mysterious, they'd still be fascinating to study, and the truth about them is almost as unbelievable as the myth. Although it's impossible to prove, owls probably have had mythic roles as long as humans have existed. Imagine Cro-Magnon families huddled fearfully around a campfire, listening in the darkness to a distant chorus of owl hoots. Or think what must have gone through Neanderthal minds when a rabbit struck by owl talons shrieked to shatter the nighttime silence. Such fearful moments are the stuff of modern day horror films, so it's reasonable that primitive humans associated owls with evil, pain, and death.

According to Paul Johnsgard (North American Owls: Biology and Natural History, Smithsonian Institution Press), Mesopotamian tablets from 2,300 B.C. depict the goddess Lilith as "winged, bird-footed, and typically accompanied by owls," a significant association because Lilith was Sumeria's goddess of death. Pallas Athene--Greek goddess of fertility and power--was also affiliated with the owl, possibly "because of the nocturnal (and especially the lunar) . . . associations between female fertility goddesses and the cycles of the moon."

In Rome, owls were respected for prophetic abilities. Johnsgard reports Pliny's description of fear and confusion when an owl entered the Forum, Virgil wrote of an owl that foretold Dido's suicide, and Horace associated owls with witchcraft. Until recent times, "nailing up of a dead owl or its wings has been widely believed in Europe to help ward off such dangers as pestilence, lightning, and hail."

Native American tribes also have stories about owls--many of which are so similar to Oriental myth that they support the theory of an Asian origin for Amerindian peoples. Oral traditions in most American tribes associate owls with death soon-to-come, and an owl is typically the bearer of the deceased's soul as it passes from this world to the next. In the Carolinas, Cherokee women bathed their children's eyes in water containing owl feathers, believing it would help them stay awake. Johnsgard provides this Cherokee tale that explains why owls are nocturnal:

When the animals and plants were first made-we do not know by whom-they were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights, just as young men now fast and keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others, until on the seventh night, of all the animals only the owl, the panther and one or two more were still awake. To these were given the power to see and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which must sleep at night.

Only four owl species breed in South Carolina, but five others show up in migration or during occasional winter visits. The most widespread year-round residents are Barred Owl, Great Horned Owl, and Eastern Screech-Owl, with Common Barn-Owls breeding less frequently in the state. Short-eared Owls occur most winters in South Carolina, but the remaining species--Snowy Owl, Burrowing Owl, Long-eared Owl, and Northern Saw-whet Owl--are quite rare.

Barred Owl
Of all owls found in the state, the Barred Owl (Strix varia) is seen most often because it is "crepuscular." This means it is active in twilight hours of dusk and dawn, and sometimes in broad daylight. Named for its breast markings, this large owl is the only Carolina species with dark eyes; all the rest have yellow irises. Barred Owls also have the most recognizable call, a "who-who-who-who, who-who-who-whoowha" that most people translate into "who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all." Barred Owls are especially vocal during courtship when, in the words of Allen Eckert (The Owls of North America, Weathervane Books), there are "specialized calls made with relative infrequency which virtually defy written description. Some are coarse, guttural, and, to human ears, almost uncouth in character. Others are much like the fierce, hair-raising shrieks of mating alley cats. There are deep chucklings, harsh laughing sounds, maniacal gibberings and gabblings, disconsolate mutterings, howls, and yells. Occasionally there will even be a decidedly disconcerting humanlike scream of pure agony." Such vivid description explains why my friend Russ Rogers Jr. barely slept for the three months it took a Barred Owl pair in his Fort Mill backyard to court and then raise offspring. Barred Owls are most common in wooded bottomlands and swamps.

Great Horned Owl
The Great Horned Owl is South Carolina's largest breeding owl, with a five-foot wing span. This species is sometimes observed at a roost in daylight, when its piercing yellow eyes and ear tufts are easily seen. Located on top of the owl's head, these feathery tufts are not near the lateral ear openings but may serve to make the species look more ferocious to predators. Many birds--especially crows--don't seem to like any kinds of owls and mob them at roosts. Frequently I've tracked the source of the incredible din that occurs when crows have an owl cornered, and I often end at a tree in which a bewildered Great Horned Owl sits--swiveling its head and blinking while its tormenters swoop as close as they dare. Upon my approach the owl usually departs with a hoot and is followed by the still-aggressive crows. Under less-beleaguering conditions, the Great Horned Owl communicates across its dry woodland haunts with a deep "hoo-hoo-hoowha," a sound almost an octave lower than the Barred Owl's call.

Eastern Screech-Owl
Our smallest breeding owl, the Eastern Screech-Owl (Otus asio), is scarcely larger than a Blue Jay and is named for two distinctive calls that carry great distances in still night air. One call is a high-pitched descending whinny that would fit right into the soundtrack of a Hollywood horror flick; the other is a constant warbling tone that can be reproduced, albeit indelicately, by tilting back your head and whistling with just the right amount of saliva on your tongue. Experienced birders carry a tape of this call or learn to imitate it because it seems irresistible to songbirds that come to investigate. Screech-Owls live in coniferous woods and occur in two color phases; in the Piedmont and mountains they tend to have rusty plumage, while eastern birds are most often gray. Their yellow eyes and ear tufts make them look like miniature versions of the Great Horned Owl.

Common Barn-Owl
Common Barn-Owls (Tyto alba) are the most urbanized Carolina owls. Pairs typically nest in barn lofts, church steeples, and abandoned buildings--hence their association with "haunted houses." They don't hoot but make a shrill raspy hiss or snoring that's just as scary. Barn-Owls, with long legs, heart-shaped faces, white breasts, and tan backs, look very different from our other owls and are in a separate family, the Tytonidae; the rest of the species are in Family Strigidae, the so-called "typical owls." Barn-Owls, which occur on most land masses, are the world's most widely-distributed nocturnal birds.

Five non-breeding owl species have been seen in South Carolina. Short-eared Owls (Asio flammeus) are uncommon winter visitors to our coastal marshes and have become very rare in the Piedmont with the loss of inland marshes and old fields. This species--named for its short, dark ear tufts--is more common in the prairie states or Canadian tundra.

The crow-sized Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) is a rarely-reported winter visitor across the state, but because it is usually silent and inhabits dense evergreen woods, it may occur more frequently than is believed. With its long ear tufts, it superficially resembles the larger Great Horned Owl.

Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia) have been sighted only four times in South Carolina, always in winter from the coast. One was photographed at Huntington Beach, where it may have been reminded of its regular habitats--rolling prairies of the West or dunes on Florida's Gulf Coast.

The Snowy Owl (Nyctea scandiaca), the largest North American owl species with its six-foot wingspan, is our only all-white owl. Common year-round in northern Canada and on Great Lakes ice floes in winter, this bird very rarely wanders into the Palmetto State. There are only 17 records, seven from the Piedmont and ten from the coastal plain. Snowy Owls seem to show up when there is a crash in tundra populations of lemmings, voles, and other prey.

The tiniest owl in South Carolina--the Northern Saw-Whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus)--is also a rare winter visitor, although its call has been reported in late spring from I'On Swamp near Charleston. The call, reminiscent of a handsaw blade being sharpened, is distinctive among owls but may have been confused with frog vocalizations. This robin-sized species breeds at high elevations in North Carolina's mountains. (NOTE: In 1999, seven Northern Saw-whet Owls were captured and banded at Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History. See Owl Research.)

Owls are probably the first birds to breed each year in South Carolina. Great Horned Owls are often on eggs by early January, and there is evidence that Barn-Owls will start laying during any month of the year. Owl courtship typically begins in autumn when a newly-mated pair begins to mark off a territory and protect it by hooting. Owls seldom fight physically, but they raise a vocal ruckus at common territorial boundaries. A Barred Owl pair will defend up to 640 acres--a square mile of territory--needed to produce enough prey for two adults and their nestlings.

Surprisingly, many owls are cavity nesters. Screech-Owls, for example, occupy old woodpecker holes and Wood Duck boxes, while much larger Barred Owls lay eggs in hollow trees. (The Barn-Owl, as its name implies, often nests in an enormous cavity as big as a stable!) Some owls recycle abandoned nests of hawks or crows, and there's even a record of nest sharing by a Red-shouldered Hawk that sat on a mixed clutch of eggs at night while a Barred Owl incubated the same nest by day.

Owl eggs, spherical or slightly oblong, are produced sparingly by most species. Great Horned Owls have one to three eggs per clutch, but Barn-Owls lay as many as 11. Unlike songbirds, which complete a clutch before incubating, owls begin setting shortly after the first egg. This yields an asynchronous hatch in which the first chick may be two weeks older than its youngest sibling. Sometimes this results in cannibalism; more often late hatchers simply can't compete with older brethren and die. The male owl usually feeds the female while she incubates, but it takes both adults to keep up with the voracious appetites of their nestlings.

As carnivores, Carolina owls dine solely on animals-from grasshoppers to cotton rats to songbirds. Great Horned Owls appear to have a special preference for skunks and are also known to take housecats that should have been kept in at night--or by day, for that matter. Barn-Owls eat large moths, frogs, snakes, lizards, and crayfish, but a mated pair may require as many as 40 rats or mice each night to feed a growing family. Since Barn-Owl chicks are tended to for up to three months after hatching, a pair and its offspring will require up to 3,600 mice and rats for just one brood! Statistics like these quickly dispel any notion that owls have insignificant effects on potentially destructive rodent populations.

Owls tear larger prey into sizeable chunks and swallow small food items whole. Food goes to the crop and then the gizzard, where digestion begins on usable parts. Hair, feathers, and bone compact into dry clumps expelled by the owl as "pellets" that litter the ground beneath a nest or roost and become wonderful story-telling tools. Nothing illustrates the food chain concept better than dissecting an owl pellet to deduce from skull fragments just how efficient a predator the owl really is.

An owl's success at capturing prey is enhanced by all sorts of amazing adaptations. Owls have very large eyes, exceptionally acute vision, and the ability to see well in low-light situations. They cannot see in total darkness, however, so owls rely exclusively on their ears to locate prey on moonless nights. The ear openings of an owl are of slightly different sizes, and they are situated asymmetrically; this causes sound to reach each eardrum at different times, providing binaural hearing that is enhanced by the owl's ability to rotate its head right or left for 270 degrees. These auditory adaptations allow a Barn-Owl to find its prey in complete darkness with a deviation of less than one degree in vertical and horizontal planes.

The wings of most birds make rustling or whistling sounds, but because of comb-like feather edgings, owls can glide in silence. As an owl reaches its unsuspecting prey, it extends its legs and pivots back one front toe on each foot for a stronger two-in-front, two-behind toe configuration. On impact, hind talons pierce the prey and front claws swing into a powerful fistlike grip that seldom loosens from a squirming rabbit, rat, or squirrel.

Compared to day-active hawks, South Carolina's nocturnal owls are seldom shot by accident or out of malice. Still, their numbers have declined steadily over the past century, mostly because of habitat loss and widespread pesticide use. Trucks and cars also take heavy tolls as owls forage along highway shoulders, hunting for rats that are attracted to food waste in roadside litter.

For owls to survive in the Palmetto State it is essential that we realize how our actions impact on wildlife populations. Owls need mature forests and undrained swamps in which to breed and old fields in which they can hunt. Dead-standing trees or snags are required not only by nesting owls but also by woodpeckers, Wood Ducks, bluebirds, bats, and flying squirrels. Some owls nest in artificial boxes, but for the most part we are far more effective in attracting owls when we set aside sizeable tracts of natural habitat. And, as with other animals that rank high on the food chain, pesticides from prey accumulate in and kill predatory owls, so it is critical that we learn to farm without so many toxic chemicals.

All owls are protected by strict state and federal laws. These marvelous creatures are worth protecting merely because they are so fascinating to study and observe, but they also play a vital role in the balance of nature. Owls, regardless of whether they are the smartest birds, are perfectly adapted for a predatory role, and it's our responsibility to help these mythical, mystical creatures play out their role each night in South Carolina's wild places.