Hoots And Screeches And Whistles, Part 1
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Hello, But Why listeners. This is Jane Lindholm, your host. For today's episode, we're bringing you something a little bit different. We were so excited to be part of what we think might be the first ever podcast festival for kids recently. The public radio station WBUR organized the mega awesome, super huge, wicked fun podcast playdate at the end of April in Boston. And

We were really happy to see so many of our listeners there, and we wanted to share the event with those of you who couldn't make it to Boston. So get your jaw muscles ready. You're going to have to do some sounds in this episode. We hope you'll sit back and enjoy the show. ♪

Does everybody recognize that music? That's our theme music. Can any of you whistle our theme music? We bet you can. Hi, I'm Jane Lindholm. I am the host of But Why, a podcast for curious kids. And I'm Melody Beaudet. You usually don't hear me on the show. I'm the producer of But Why. And actually, this is really different for us because normally when we record the show, it's just Jane kind of alone in a recording booth talking to herself, kind of like in a closet.

Yeah, so we're a little bit nervous. Could you all close your eyes so we don't have to look at you? No, it's not going to work?

If you don't know But Why, But Why is a show where curious kids ask questions. I bet all of you have a lot of questions for the adults in your lives. And you send them to us, and it's our job to answer them for you. How many of you have sent in a question to But Why? Have a lot of you sent us questions? I see one over there. Yay! I bet there's at least one of you here who might have been on But Why. Have any of you had your questions answered? Oh, yay! I see at least one. Yay! Yay!

Well, we're going to answer a bunch of questions today about birds and owls. And Melody is going to glide over to the computer. This is where she feels most comfortable. And she's going to run the show for us. So, the first thing I want you all to do is to close your eyes. This time I'm serious. Close your eyes. Pretend you're in a forest at dusk. You're walking along. It's very quiet.

And then, suddenly...

That is a female barred owl. She's calling out to other owls, saying something like, Hey buddy, where are you? I'm over here. The calling you're hearing now is from a couple of barred owls, and they're being territorial. Do you know what territorial means?

Yeah, territorial means, hey, this is my tree. You stay away. And by the way, any mice that you see on the ground, those are mine. I'm eating those mice. You get out of here. Have you ever heard a barred owl? Did you know what barred owl babies sound like?

Yeah, they're talking now. These are barred owl families. The babies make very high-pitched squeals as they talk to their parents, and I think they're saying, I want those mice! Get me my mice! Does this sound like the way your family talks? A little bit. All of our owl sounds today came from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and we're really grateful to them for letting us use these sounds.

But we like to answer questions, and we've gotten a lot of questions from our listeners all over the world about owls. Now, I bet you want to see an owl, don't you? I've got good news and bad news. We don't have a live owl with us today because we didn't want an owl to get spooked by all of you. But we did go visit an owl and a human to get some answers to your questions.

Let me just break in here to describe what happened next. Again, this is a live show in front of an audience, a whole theater full of people. So I'm up on stage, but behind me there's a big movie screen. And so we played a movie that we have made of a field trip we took to visit an owl sanctuary. On the video, you see me talking to a very nice man who has an owl perched on his arm. The

The man is wearing a glove so the owl's talons don't dig into his skin, and the owl is attached with a leash so it doesn't fly away. Now we're at the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum here in Vermont, where, as you can see, I've got some very exciting creatures that I'm with. Nobody cares about us, but who are you? You're right. No one does care about us when he's here. My name is Michael Clough. I'm the assistant director here at the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum. And who else is with us?

today? Well, this guy is Alistair, and Alistair is a barred owl, one of our most common owls here in Vermont. And why is he here at the museum? He's not just here to sightsee and check out all of the great animals. No, he's actually here because of an accident. About eight years ago, he was struck by a car, which actually happens a lot of wildlife. That car hit him in the head, and it damaged his left eye, so he's completely blind in that eye.

There he goes. So he can fly. Yeah, absolutely. The wings work great. And unfortunately, that eye doesn't, and wings aren't enough to make it out there. We're going to talk today about owls because several of you have been sending us some amazing owl questions. My name is Prudence, and I'm five years old, and my question is, how do owls eat?

Well, Prudence, that's a great question. And owls are actually part of a group of birds we call raptors. And it means when they want to eat something, they're going to grab it. So you look at Alistair's feet. See those big toenails there? Those are called talons. And he's going to catch his food with those talons. And he's not catching bird seed. Alistair is a hunter. So he's looking for mice, but barred owls also like frogs and salamanders and snakes. So he'll catch them with his feet. Oh, he gets excited just thinking about it.

And then he'll use his sharp beak to cut that food up into bite-sized pieces. But actually, he's kind of a lazy eater. And if he can swallow it in one gulp, he will.

What happens after he eats? Yeah, that's something owls are actually kind of famous for. And he'll swallow his food or he'll eat his food and it kind of sits up. It has like a second stomach and he'll sit in there and he'll digest all the good juicy parts. But then the hair and the bones, he can't digest those. And birds can't pass solid things through them. So he'll have to spit it out.

And we call that an owl pellet. And if you find an owl pellet out in the woods, it's really exciting because you can take that pellet apart and find the skeleton of whatever that owl ate. My name is Caleb, and I'm four years old, and I live in Boston, and I want to know, how do owls see in the dark? My name is Juniper, and I'm six years old, and my question is, how do owls see so well in the dark?

Owls are actually one of the few birds that see great in the dark, and a big part of it are those huge eyes. Look how huge Alistair's eyes are. Now, his head looks bigger than it really is. You look here, and most of that head is just feathers. His eyeballs are so big, if his skull was the same size as mine, his eyes would be as big as grapefruit.

And those giant eyes can gather in a lot of light. They're set up to process that light way better than we do. To give you an idea, an owl can fly through the woods by the light of the stars. Don't you try that. Our eyes can't do it. And of course, something else that helps him is just like a deer or raccoon you might see on the side of the road at night, he has a reflector in the back of his eye.

And that doubles the light that goes through his retina. Think if there were two full moons and twice as many stars. He gets to start with that much light, which is a pretty big advantage over us. My name is Matthew, and I live in Annapolis, Maryland. I am six years old, and my question is, how are owls nocturnal? Ah, Matthew, that's a great question. And of course, the eyesight helps, right? Those great big eyes we were just talking about, giving that great night vision.

But you know, owls have other adaptations that help them hunt at night, like a barred owl especially. His ears are so good, he doesn't even need to see his food to catch it. Owl hearing is incredible. If you guys have an owl in the room with you today, he could be listening to your heart's beat.

Yeah, incredible. But they don't have a big ear like we do, do they? No, he'll use his whole face to funnel sound into that ear. And his ear hole is huge. This bird weighs a little over a pound. His ear openings are three times bigger than mine. So they can hear these very quiet sounds and then his ears are crooked. That lets him hear exactly where a sound is coming from. Here in Vermont, we see that in the wintertime. The owls can listen to mice hiding under the snow, reach in, and grab them.

Hi, my name is Dora. I'm 10 years old and I live in Heidelberg. My question is, how do owls swivel their heads all the way around? Oh, that's a great question. And it's so neat with science how so many questions feed directly into the next one. And remember those big eyes? He can't move them. They're too big to move. So he has to turn his head. You mean he can't go like this? Exactly. Like we can hold still and look over.

Look over there. He can't do that. For him to look over there, he has to turn his head. Luckily, he has a really long neck, so that helps him. He actually has twice as many bones in his neck as a giraffe has. Really? He has 14 little bones that stack up in there. A giraffe only has seven, just like us. Giraffes' necks are quite a bit longer. They are quite a bit longer if you measured them out, but he has more bones in that neck. And it lets him turn his head not all the way around.

But 270 degrees. So imagine if you look straight ahead, turn your head to the left. Go ahead, guys, try it. Turn your head to the left, go all the way around the back, and put your chin on your right shoulder. No, I can't do it. No, I can't do it either. But if he really wants to, he can. He usually doesn't have to. Backwards is usually good enough. My name is Bennett. I am five and a third. I live in Setford, Vermont.

I wonder why chickens walk with their head going back and forth. So, Michael, why do birds move their heads like this? You see pigeons doing it and chickens. Sure, sure. I don't know if Alistair does it. Well, you know, an owl can do it, but they're really not the best example of it. You don't see owls walking around on the ground very much.

But what we basically have there, and that's a tricky one to answer, but how they do it, you know, we think of it like this. Yeah. But really, it's more birds can kind of lock their head in space and think of like a bird upon a tree branch, maybe a hawk.

Like an owl is looking for little mice to eat and the wind starts blowing and it's like, oh, whoa. But they can lock their head so their bodies swing around their head. And when like that pigeon's walking down the sidewalk, they're reaching their neck forward and their body catches up. And they reach their head forward and their body catches up. Huh.

So it helps them maintain a clearer view. Birds' eyes are super important to birds. And, you know, different owls live everywhere. There are screech owls in New York City. I mean, there are owls in every habitat all over the country. Michael, we're going to say goodbye to you, and we're going to learn how to make some owl sounds. Oh, that's great. Thanks for talking with us today. Thank you, and thanks, Alistair. You guys have fun. That was pretty cool. Did you guys like Alistair the owl?

I really like him. Melody wanted to take him home. And thanks to Michael Clough. So we have more questions about owls than we had time to answer with Alistair and Michael. So should we answer a few now, live? Okay. Coming up, we'll learn about two more kinds of owls.

This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. Today, we're treating you to our live show in Boston. It was called Hoots and Screeches and Whistles, all about owls and other birds. In this episode, we're learning about owls. And we're just about to welcome a special guest.

We have one more special guest, and I need your help. Could you give a great big round of applause for our friend? Her name is Bridget Butler, but we know her better as the Bird Diva. Let's welcome Bridget. Hi, everybody.

Bridget, why are you known as the bird diva? Well, I gave myself a fancy name to kind of describe a little bit about the work that I do. So in Vermont, I work on protecting birds and their habitat. I do presentations, I lead bird walks, and I do surveys for scientists. And Jane, I really wanted to kind of have like an alter ego when I did that. And so I became the bird diva.

Where's your cape? Oh, I forgot to pack that. I thought this was a fancy deal. No. Well, are you ready to answer some questions? I am. I'm very excited about hooting with all of you today. Okay, and we're going to learn to hoot like an owl. So let's hear this question. My name is Pippa, and I live in...

West Oregon and I'm five. And my question is, how do different owls make different sounds? Thank you. Mechanically speaking, how does an owl make a sound, Bridget? Let's break it down. So with us, right, we use our voice box. It's also known as our larynx. And it's just one tube. What's really super cool about birds is they have two tubes. And so we're going to call it a different word. We're going to call it a syringe.

A syrinx? Right. And it's right above where the lungs and the air sacs are in the bird's body. So the bird can take a deep breath and push air through the syrinx on either side and tighten those muscles and relax those muscles in order to create sound.

So can birds harmonize with each other? Two sounds at once? Two sounds at once. We can only make one sound at once with our larynx, but with a syrinx, you can call from one side and the other side, and you can alternate. Just like that. Like the wood thrush.

That's very slowed down. Yeah, it is. Very slow speed. So the wood thrush has this beautiful ethereal sound that you might hear in woodlands across the northeast, and it's something that we can't mimic easily because we don't have a syrinx. Okay, well here's one more question. Hi, my name is Claire. I am six years old, and I am from Dover, New Hampshire, and my question is why do owls have different hoots?

So now we know how owls and birds make the sounds with their bodies, with their syrinx. But why do they all sound different? Well, there are a bunch of different types of owls, right, Jane? So you got to see Alistair the barred owl. And we're going to talk about a couple of other different types of owls. And each owl has a voice to be able to communicate with owls of their own kind. Could we actually learn how to make an owl call? Would you guys like that?

Yeah, and this is what's awesome about owls. Owls have low notes that are really nice and clear, so they're actually the easiest to mimic, even though we don't have a syrinx. So we're going to do that. Okay, we saw Alistair, the barred owl. Can we learn how to talk to Alistair? Sure. So owls make sounds that we can't make, and the way that people describe them is they put words to them in order to kind of remember the patterns and the pauses and put all of that together. So...

Ornithologists, people who study birds, say that barred owls say, who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? That's kind of silly. Yeah. Can you guys try that? Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? Now here's the thing, Jane. If you go out in the woods and you just say that, yeah, it's not going to work. So we have to make it hootie. Are you guys ready to make it hootie?

All right, so the first thing we need to do is get our owl face on. Are you ready? So we're just going to do one hoot, and we're going to go, hoo! Hoo! Ooh, this is a good group. Hoo! Very nice. Now we're going to mimic that same pattern with our owl face on. I'm going to call first, and then you call back. Are you ready? All right, here we go. Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!

Lovely. Now, if you want to get really fancy, we can go... Nice. What's really cool about barred owls is they're super social. So if you have a woodland near you where you're hearing barred owls, if you go out and listen and you mimic the same thing back to them, they will often call back to you. So practice makes perfect. Remember that owl face.

Can we do it one more time? Should we do our bird owl? Yes. Okay. All right. Let's make sure we hear all the owls. We're going to get all the owls outside of the building to call back to us. Are you ready? On the count of three. One, two, three. I know, duck. Duck. Duck.

So that's a barred owl. But we just heard the question about how owls and why they make different sounds. Could we learn another owl? Yes, of course. How about a screech owl? Ooh, there's a screech owl. This is a super cute little owl. So this one, the other way that we can describe owl sounds is the way it sounds. This owl sounds up high, and then it drops down. So it makes like a whinny sound. So we're going to start up with an owl face. Whirr.

Can you guys do that? There you go. They sound good. You guys are so good at this. We have owl whisperers everywhere. I think it's just a stadium theater full of owls. Let's see how we did. We're going to hear what a real screech owl sounds like. Oh, you guys did pretty good. Yeah. There are a lot of screech owls in here. I'm overwhelmed. I'm glad I'm not a mouse. Cool. Cool.

Do you want to see this screech owl? His name is Matrix, but I like to call him Blinky. Let's see him. Okay, so we thought we'd bring out a couple more owls. Here's our eastern screech owl. And here in the northeast, you'd expect the screech owl to be a different color. They actually come in three different colors. Brown, gray, which is the most common here, and then this, kind of the sports model, the red screech owl. And you'll see many more of these birds as you go further south.

The thought is that the gray screech owls just do better in the north. When those leaves fall off the trees, they're bark colored. So lots of good places to hide. These little owls are predators just like the big ones. See, he has those same talons. He has that same sharp beak.

But he's small, so he has to worry about all those bigger owls coming to actually eat him up. Little screech owls are tough though, and they will hunt mice, other birds, they love June bugs, mmm, crunchy. Neat little owl to have flying around, and also an owl that likes areas where people are. You'll find them living in towns and cities.

And of course farmland is great for all those mice. This particular owl was living along the side of the road. Now a lot of birds of prey like it along the side of the road. Sometimes people throw garbage out and that attracts those little mice and other critters into that roadway. Unfortunately when he went after whatever he was going after, he didn't look both ways. And he was hit by a car. You can see how that left wing kind of hangs down a little funny there.

When his wing was broken, it didn't heal right, so he can't move that wing. He can't fly anymore, and that's why he lives here at the museum. So that's Matrix, the screech owl. And I think we should learn about one more owl. Yes! The super cosmically cute owl, Jane? Okay, fine.

So here we have another little owl. This is the saw-wet owl. And she's actually the smallest owl in the Northeast. A big saw-wet owl still weighs less than a quarter of a pound. So little tiny guys, but don't let the looks fool you. She's very cute, but she's a serious predator. Their favorite food is mice.

Big deal, right? She's an owl. Of course she eats mice. But look how small she is. For her to eat mice, that's like me saying I like to eat German shepherds, which I don't. But same kind of proportions. You know, you have to be pretty tough to go after something that big. And these solid owls definitely are. As you can see, she also has an eye problem, just like Alistair. A little more severe, though. She lost that right eye in the accident.

Saw-wet owls are also kind of rebel owls. You know, we hear all these rules about owls. Owls are very faithful to their territory. The owl you heard last night, probably the same owl that was there last year. Probably the same owl that will be there next year, unless it was a saw-wet owl. They go someplace new every year. Owls made for life, kind of like we do. But anyway, they made for life unless you're a saw-wet owl, someone new every year. And owls don't migrate, right? They hunt, well, unless you're a saw-wet owl.

People will even trap migrating saw-whet owls to learn more about where they go and how they live. The saw-whet owl turns up in a lot of Native American folklore, and in many cases, it's this incredibly powerful character. You know, saw-whet owl versus rabbit is why we have night and day. The owl made the night. Stories of saw-whet owl used to be the biggest, most powerful owl, and the other animals had to call in the sun to keep them from being such a bully.

lots of stories like that around this amazing little owl and you know the funny thing is the

They do kind of act like they're powerful. If you meet them out in the world, very often they don't, they're not very afraid of you and you can get real close to them. Maybe that's because they're fearless and all powerful. Maybe it's because most of them live in the North and they don't know what we are. In any case, if you do have a sawed owl around, don't reach out and grab her or anything like that because she is still a raptor, but definitely get close. Take some good pictures. They're great little birds to have in our backyards.

That owl's name is Diana, and she's pretty cool too. But if you're going to have a saw-wet owl in your backyard, you might want to know how to talk to it. So can we learn a saw-wet owl call? Yeah, sure, because often, especially with the tiny owls, we don't get to see them first. We hear them first. So how many of you know what a dump truck is? I know what a dump truck is. All right, how many of you know the sound that a dump truck makes?

Can you make it for me? Beep. You mean backing up. Oh, yeah, backing up. Not the brrrr, but the backup part. So pretend you're a big dump truck backing up. Beep. Perfect. Now, if you're in the middle of the woods and you hear something like that that's a little bit more hootie, it's not a dump truck. It's a saw-wet owl. So show me owl face, and then we're going to go...

You got it. So if you hear a tiny little dump truck backing up in the woods, you know to look around for a saw-wet owl now. Or a dump truck. Maybe. I mean, you never know. All right, let's hear how we did. Here's what a real saw-wet owl sounds like. Can you do it? Nice job, you guys. Round of applause for all your owl calls.

So we've spent some time talking about owls, but did you know there are more than 10,000 birds in the bird world? 10,000 different kinds? We are mammals. There are only 5,000 different kinds of mammals. So there is a ton of diversity in the bird world.

So we're going to answer some questions about birds more generally and teach you how to make more bird calls and identify the birds that might be in your own neighborhood. But you're going to have to wait for our next episode for the second half of our live show from Boston to get to those other bird questions with bird diva Bridget Butler and our fabulous audience.

In the meantime, if you have a question for But Why, have an adult record it. It's easy to do on a smartphone. Don't forget to tell us who you are, where you live, and how old you are. And then have your adult send the file to questions at butwhykids.org. We'll do our best to get an answer for you.

But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. Special thanks to the crew at WBUR and the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, and to VPR's own John Billingsley, who made our owl video for us.

If you'd like to see Alistair and the other owls in the video, or watch a video stream of the podcast festival itself, have your adult help you go to the But Why Kids Facebook page. We'll be back in two weeks. Until then, stay curious.