The first email from Chris…

Hi Bruce,

I was catching up with your blog today, Bruce, and noticed your post from
November speculating that there are no longer any Eastern Screech Owls in
the park.
Never fear:  though I don’t know where they live (at the moment), I have
seen one or two ESOs hunting in the familiar areas, on more
than one occasion when I’m out walking my dog after dark.  The most recent
sighting was last week, when an ESO did a fly-by as I watched a raccoon
shamble down from a tree for her evening dumpster diving.
So, they’re still around, probably enjoying the peace and quiet that comes
when one’s avian celebrity star has waned a bit.
with best wishes for the holidays (all of them),

Chris

On Saturday, the first owl of the fall season was spotted in Central Park, a Long-eared Owl (LEOW).   (I was working, so I didn’t get to photograph LEO.)

I did make it the park around dusk to look for Eastern Screech Owls (ESOW).  Unfortunately, I suspect that there may no longer be any surviving ESOs in the park. These owls were reintroduced to the park in 1998 and 2001-2002 and have not been fairing well.  Screech Owls fly at low heights and easily run into cars.  (The original decline in Eastern Screech Owls occurred about the same time as the carriage paths in the park were turned into roadways.)

I suspect the fall owl season will consist of viewing migrating Long-eared and Northern Saw-whet Owls, and confirming the disappearance of the Eastern Screech Owl from Central Park.

December Update: At least two Eastern Screech Owls are in the North Woods!  I’m happy to be wrong!

After all of the problems with the West Side Screech-Owls in the Spring of 2006, I wasn’t optimistic that there were any surviving Screech-Owls in the park.  Around Thanksgiving, after the leaves had fallen from the trees, I searched all of the known Screech-Owl cavities near the Rambles and in the North Woods.

I had no luck finding any owls, and even wrote in my blog, that I though 2006 might be the last year Screech-Owls were seen in Central Park.

In December, I received a note from Christine (Chris), who walks her wonderful dog Fig, in the Northwest of the park every evening that she had seen Screech-Owls.   I spent a few evenings looking for them without any luck.

In early March, I received emails detailing two different rescues of Screech-Owl babies up north.  Again, I went up to look and found nothing.

In late March, Chris wrote us again saying she had found the owls. What was wonderful, was that she had not only found the parents, but also a fledgling.  Luckily, the next day, I got to see and begun studying the Screech-Owls.

What follows is my account of the adventures and discoveries watching these three Eastern-Screech Owls in the Spring of 2007.

These photographs were all taken with natural light.  Advances in
digital photography make it possible to take pictures in very low
light.  The photographs were taken with a 500mm lens at
distances of 25-200 feet. 

The long exposures also brighten up the dark sky, so that it appears to
be daylight.  However, most of these pictures were taken after dusk.

As the nights darkened, natural light sometimes was replaced by
orange street lamps and green and red traffic signals.  You’ll notice some color shifts in the
photographs or blurry images.  To have avoided this completely, I would have needed to
use flash.  I decided that I would rather have the color shifts than
risk disturbing the owls with repeated flashes. 

I don’t think limited use of flash has any effect on the owls, but since this was part of a long term study, I wanted to be extra careful.  It’s also important to say how much flash photography disturbs the ambiance and those watching with you.  When I go birding, if I see a someone or a group watching a bird, I slowly join them before taking pictures.  Nature photographers in Central Park should take the same approach, and ask their fellow birders if they mind them taking flash pictures.  These birds don’t deserve an aggressive "paparazzi" style photo shoot.

For background on the Eastern Screech-Owl, there is basic information on The Owl Pages or the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology’s Animal Diversity Web.

Our gray morph West Side owl may have moved to the Ramble, in an area that used to be the territory of the now deceased red morph owl.  This makes it possible, that given the autopsy results of the red morph, which cited cause of death as an attack by a raptor, that the Eastern Screech-Owl in the Ramble was the red morph’s killer.  This story continues to have unexpected twists and turns.

Fly out (or it now fly off, now that the owl is sleeping out in the open) was at 8 p.m. sharp.

I wasn’t able to make the Sunday fly out, but reports were that the owl flew out on schedule.

On Monday, there was no sign of an owl, just European Starlings hovering about the hole.  We hope that this only means that the surviving adult Eastern Screech-Owl is now sleeping in tree branches now that the trees have leaves and the weather is warmer, and that nothing has happened to the owl.

On Tuesday, European Starlings were seen in the cavity early in the morning.  By mid-day a dead owl hatchling was visible at the edge of the cavity.  The park dispatched a “cherry picker”, and a second dead hatchling was discovered in the cavity.  Both bodies were badly decomposed.

On Wednesday, a park employee found a third hatchling on the ground near the owls’ tree.  I went to the tree and the surounding area in the evening to look one more time for our adult owl.  It was nowhere to be found, which may be good news not bad.

So, a winter season of Eastern Screech-Owl watching ends with sad
results in the southern portion of the park.  The season started with four
adults, two in the Ramble and two along the West Drive.  It ended with
only one adult and a death toll of three adults and three hatchlings.