Steve and Bill start off 2018 with an episode about Eastern Screech-owls. The guys talk about its unique dichromatism, adaptations for hunting at night, and even call one in during the podcast. Make sure to wear headphones for this one- the birds calling in the distance aren't always easy to hear. Steve also gets really nervous about being killed by a bobcat for some reason... Enjoy!

Notes:

It wasn't directly stated during the episode, but Steve didn't use a single typical peer reviewed publication for this episode (not for a lack of trying though). He stuck to field guides, birding books, and old observational papers. It's a bit different than usual, but there's not a wealth of publicly available peer reviewed literature covering Eastern Screech-owls. If you have any interesting papers, be sure to send them our way!

Mistakes:

Steve says pronounces the "L" in palm at 34:50... he doesn't understand how silent letters work

Useful Links:

Always Wondering Art

Thomas Nuttall's legacy

Philadelphia's Secretive Nocturnal Wildlife

Eastern Screech-owl Nesting Box Plans

Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of New York State by David Werier

The First 40 Miles Podcast

Work Cited:

Artuso, C., 2010. The diet of the Eastern Screech-Owl, Megascops asio, at the northern periphery of its range. The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 124(2), pp.122-133.

Bendire, C.E., 1889. Description of the nest and eggs of Megascops asio maxwelliae, the Rocky Mountain screech owl. The Auk, pp.298-302.

Bowmaker, J.K. and Martin, G.R., 1978. Visual pigments and colour vision in a nocturnal bird, Strix aluco (tawny owl). Vision research, 18(9), pp.1125-1130.

"Browse taxonomic tree - Strigiformes." Catalogue of Life - 20th December 2017 : Taxonomic tree, Naturalis Biodiversity Center. 01/27/2018. www.catalogueoflife.org/col/browse/tree/id/f9c68fc94ddfab6df17c3a4333afd2aa.

Bull, J.L. and Farrand, J., 1977. Audubon Society field guide to North American birds, eastern region. Knopf.

Chen, K., Liu, Q., Liao, G., Yang, Y., Ren, L., Yang, H. and Chen, X., 2012. The sound suppression characteristics of wing feather of owl (Bubo bubo). Journal of Bionic Engineering, 9(2), pp.192-199.

Choate, E.A., 1973. dictionary of American bird names. The Harvard Common Press. Harvard & Boston, Massachusetts.

Courter, J.R. and Ritchison, G., 2010. Alarm calls of tufted titmice convey information about predator size and threat. Behavioral Ecology, 21(5), pp.936-942.

Dinets, V., 2011. Eastern Screech-Owl catches fish by wading. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 123(4), pp.846-847. Vancouver



Eastman, J., 1997. Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket. University of Illinois Press.

Erlich, P.R., Dobkin, D.S. and Wheye, D., 1988. The birder's handbook. Simon and Shuster Inc. New York, NY

Hasbrouck, E.M., 1893. Evolution and dichromatism in the genus Megascops. The American Naturalist, 27(318), pp.521-533.

Konishi, M., 1973. How the owl tracks its prey: experiments with trained barn owls reveal how their acute sense of hearing enables them to catch prey in the dark. American Scientist, 61(4), pp.414-424.

Martin, G.R., 1974. Clor vision in the tawny owl (Strix aluco). Journal of comparative and physiological psychology, 86(1), p.133.

McDonald, S. 1999. "Otus asio" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed January 28, 2018 at http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Otus_asio/

Nagy, C., Bardwell, K., Rockwell, R.F., Christie, R. and Weckel, M., 2012. Validation of a citizen science-based model of site occupancy for eastern screech owls with systematic data in suburban New York and Connecticut.

Nagy, C.M. and Rockwell, R.F., 2012. Identification of individual Eastern Screech-Owls Megascops asio via vocalization analysis. Bioacoustics, 21(2), pp.127-140.

Pannkuk, E.L., Siefferman, L.M. and Butts, J.A., 2010. Colour phases of the eastern screech owl: a comparison of biomechanical variables of body contour feathers. Functional ecology, 24(2), pp.347-353.

Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B. and Zim, H.S., 2001. Birds of North America: a guide to field identification. Macmillan.

Roulin, A., Burri, R. and Antoniazza, S., 2011. Owl melanin-based plumage redness is more frequent near than away from the equator: implications on the effect of climate change on biodiversity. Biological journal of the Linnean Society, 102(3), pp.573-582.

"Search all names - Results for "nuttal"." Catalogue of Life - 20th December 2017 : Search all names, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/nuttal/fossil/0/match/0/page/1/sort/direction/asc//direction/asc.

Sibley, D.A., 2003. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. Alfred A. Knopf

Wells, D., 2002. 100 Birds and how they got their names. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

