Encounter with a Saw Whet Owl

by OFCO member Norm Baker

Recently, when we came out of a store to load stuff into the car, there were people in the parking lot looking at something on the ground. A lady exclaimed”It’s a baby owl!”  One look told me it was a young adult Saw Whet. It appeared to have problems, the least of which is sitting in a Home Depot parking lot immediately outside the main entrance. How it got specifically there is anybody’s guess. People were calling the raptor center and Audubon to find out what to do. No answers. I volunteered to help the bird.

A friend of mine back in Minnesota who worked in the university’s raptor rehabilitation barn told me how to approach young owls: You bend forward, face to face, make eye contact and click your teeth together about ten times for about two seconds – which I did. The young owl then responded with several clicks of its own made by its beak. It allowed me pick it up without any fighting or struggling. I handed the bird to Peggy and told her to do the same: face forward, eye contact, and teeth clicking. The little owl always responded by clicking its beak several times. We took it home and put it in cage. Since I had once worked for a ve,t I knew something about assessing possible body damage (being hit by a car, etc). We let it settle down and tried to feed it. It would take food but it was not impressed with beef – apparently because it does not taste like mouse. Every time we handled i,t we did the face to face, eye contact and teeth clicking and the bird would let us do anything we needed to do. I examined it for injuries and found none. I was surprised how quickly it settled down and sat on the perch just watching us.

After our  dinner, the bird became much more active at dusk and tried to escape the cage for about three or four minutes. It tried to exit each corner of the cage just once. Then it settled down to sit on the perch and watched television for a half hour. Ye,s it was clearly watching television. I was going to examine it once more but thought it was so easy going and gentle, it must be someone’s tame pet bird. That was my mistake. As soon as Peg or I picked it up, without doing the bending forward, face to face and teeth clicking, it sank its talons into our fingers. It broke the skin on her hand but not mine. But it did also bite me and could clearly take a chunk if it wanted. I cannot believe how powerful its little feet are. It could have easily broken the skin but didn’t as soon as I turned it and did the face to face and teeth clicking. It simply relaxed its grip everywhere. We decided it was probably OK and just needed to be released. We picked up the cage to take it outside to our deck. When we picked up the cage, the bird jumped from the perch to a corner of the cage and simply held on with its feet and beak with ist eyes closed like it was frightened. We put the cage on the table on the deck and opened the door. It opened its eyes and jumped from the corner of the cage to the perch and then directly to the sill on the door. Then it flew off into the night.

I was really impressed how well the face to face and teeth clicking worked. I had seen my friend do that several times back at the university. It is what animal behaviorists call a sign stimulus that creates a specific behavioral response. I was also impressed with the intelligence of this animal. It assessed its immediate situation and took appropriate steps without mindless struggling or fighting or biting. Cute as hell.  Hopefully it finds Lost Mountain a good place to live.