The Lady And The Owl

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right you guys [Music] i think probably owls are one of the least understood of all of our animals or birds kaye and larry mckeever live in retirement on an estuary of the jordan river midway between hamilton and st catharines ontario for the past 10 years they have devoted their lives to the care and rehabilitation of injured owls [Music] we have about um 88 owls on the premises just at the moment of course the number varies we have gone up to around 100 at one time and of that we have a pretty good batting average we are able to release about 40 percent now come on there fido i'm actually come on kid yeah i'm after you final come on you're out of what i want [Applause] oh no don't get your feet all messed up in here kid i use the net just to cut down on the amount of time it takes to catch the owl and that reduces the panic level that she has a chance to work up to the faster the better my trouble is sometimes like now i've got her talons all caught up in the net you've got kind of sore wings haven't you had an impact injury probably hit a plane or a wire or something like that i'm hoping we can let them go this year the most attractive little owls it's the only way to carry now i've brought an injured snowy and injured great horned owl two three even four hours in a car on their back without any trouble at all they just look at that fly very still it just seems incredible that this is the owl that was flapping around isn't it that's there they're not in a trance or anything i don't know why it is but they feel very calm that way mind you he's keeping an eye out for the first chance of escape all the time he's not that dumb huh this was rather an amusing incident uh after a lecture which kay had been giving about our all project a little old lady came up to her and said the thing that i'm wondering about is how do injured owls find you so since then we've always pictured an injured owl limping along the highway saying how far the mckeevers [Music] we have at the moment 20 outside flight cages the size of the cages really gauge the size of the owl that they will contain they're also designed for certain species of owls and the whole object is that the bird have an opportunity to learn to fly again to use its wings and to in the case of injured legs to have enough velocity that when it lands on a branch it has to learn to grip it again [Music] i really started about 10 years ago with my first injured owl not really realizing what i was getting into and larry and i've only been married for about seven years and he had no idea what was going to come for a devil who [Music] do you find that you can pretty well mimic their calls yes i get so used to this is why larry says i'm turning into an owl i get so used to them i go out and i hoot back and forth what would an article sound like now you really want to hear it well they have a kind of a strange call the articles that just the male does the call and he gets up on a kind of a prominent position and he says and you can hear it a long way away what's your reaction when you see your wife out there hooting he thinks i'm turning into another i wouldn't think she thinks like an owl really but she's intensely interested in owls there's no doubt about that he's just being generous but what he really means is that i'm obsessed i sometimes think the elves come first in her mind in fact he figures that when he goes he's going to be good i'll meet why the devotion i think that larry's devoted because he couldn't get away from it and i'm devoted because i'm just crazy about owls i'm just fascinated by them i feel they've been largely overlooked i think they're largely misunderstood and i'm i fear that they may one day be pretty well eliminated this is a little saw wet owl it's our smallest species in eastern north america and it was apparently hit by a car this morning is brought in dead and neck was broken and there are a lot of feathers taken off the top of the head and we just wanted to show it to you because it has a really remarkable ear aperture when you think of the face of the alum in fact the head of the owl being so small there is the ear aperture one of the problems with all owls is that the rockets because they have such a small skull and so much of the skull is taking up with that ear aperture there and the eyeball that blue uh surface in behind there is the back of the eyeball and there just isn't room in all of that for muscles to control movement of the eyes themselves this is a very sophisticated ear because this is a little bird that's almost entirely nocturnal and hunts almost entirely by his hearing i'd say that in general owls hunt by sound there are only one or two exceptions in north america the snowy would be one the little pygmy on the west coast would be another they pursue prey by sight but all other owls only use their eyes to avoid obstacles would you recommend an owl as a house pet no i really wouldn't because first of all they do make messes and you have to be prepared for that i think an immaculate housekeeper would go crazy with an owl as a pet we refer to this washroom as tibbetts washroom because this is where she has her daytime roof we have to take some of the towels out of the bathroom at night because tiglett has a high old time landing on the towel and pulling out the threads one at a time this is just another of the hazards of keeping an owl is tiglett a boy or a girl we somehow refer to her as a she because we have all her life just thought of tigger as a girl but i'm beginning to think now that she's adult that she has a male note in her voice what is she doing now you know it's just panting now it's just the way that owls get extra oxygen into their lungs when they're hot they do this at times of stress but in the summertime we often see them sitting around outside panting like that it's just how creepy unfortunately for an imprinted owl it associates with people and if i really sweep her of course she'd if i didn't fear she'd go and hang around someone else's house and then someone else isn't sooner or later of course somebody would shoot her because she'd be acting so strangely and anyway there'd be no point in releasing and all that's imprinted on people because they never have a relationship with another owl so they wouldn't breathe they wouldn't mate in fact weeper thinks she's a people basically she has no relationship with other owls to her they are the alien species and i'm the sort of the her own species in brief season if i bring any food out she really gets quite worked up because that's the sort of typical breeding approach of a male to a female owl is bringing her a nice tasty morsel of mouse creeper of course wants to breed with me which is a bit awkward yes i'm no weeper okay who is the owl behind larry well behind larry is a spectacle now from central america we don't know her exact origin but that is the the range of the birds and we call her granny i suppose for obvious reasons it may even be a he for all we know we don't know the sex but the spectacles we've just always called the all granny this bird's been imprinted on people and she's one of the only two house pets we have people wonder why we give owls names and think perhaps it's a bit cute or corny but it's really for our own help because when larry and i are talking about our various owls it's a lot easier for us to say granny than to say that spectacle owl down in the such such a cage we don't give names to the birds that are going to be released the owl is always called the wise old owl is the owl smart bird i don't think it's any smarter than any other bird and i doubt it it's quite as smart perhaps uh in um human judgment as a hawk i don't think the owl is really as wise as it looks i think some people who sit back and say nothing and blink their eyes are supposedly wise too but they're really not what do you call a group of owls what do i call them what he calls them is unprintable but traditionally a group of owls is called a parliament of owls whereas a group of geese is a gaggle of geese i think owls have a number of special characteristics that other birds of prey don't have they have a seven extra vertebra in the neck which gives them this very maneuverable head contrary to what some people think they can't twist their own heads off but they they can turn about 270 degrees and people who have ever observed an owl and will see that they all has a peculiar motion of the head like this and it's a it seems to be a form of triangulation the same way that our eyes triangulate naturally by turning in the socket is granny going to take off she's going to poo on larry larry can you house train it out i don't think so i don't think we could ever teach an all to three thousands all right stays out there i guess does uh granny feel safe up there granny feels very safe up there she's higher than any of us is this the characteristic of an owl yes all owls like to be up high they feel that if they can look down on something that is their natural stations and they like that nice feeling of being up above and surveying everything down below this is the european eagle owl this is the biggest owl in the world this owl is going to be a predator on large rodents uh big rats groundhogs uh it'll also prey on hares and rabbits and skunks and uh probably small foxes and wolves they really are called crepuscular hunters in that they hunt in the evening and the morning rather than the sort of middle of the night people don't think they hunt until dark but that isn't quite so as soon as the light is reduced somewhat they start hunting the the coloration of the eyes is a very very rich color as you can see but they're quite unique we don't have anything in north america with an eye that color in the owl family it's really quite spectacular now that is the baby if you can believe it that was born this year in the end of may i haven't heard the baby hoot yet so i'm not sure from the hoot which sex it is these are the parent birds the tragedy is they have been almost exterminated as wild birds in europe one of the interesting things about these owls for being the biggest style in the world has one of the smallest songs and uh you would expect something really monumental out of an owl that size but all they say is ooh and it's really rather amusing well this is a little elf owl probably weighing about 40 grams it's our smallest owl in the world and they are native to the sonoro desert region they live in holes in the saguaro cactus there they pray uh at night on crickets grasshoppers small lizards occasionally very small rodents and what would happen to that owl if you i think we'll just try letting this one go and see which way he goes [Music] she was black and blue when we got her she came from the airport and i don't really know how an injury like that could have been caused by impact of a vehicle airplane or a car or something because all down the side of her head down one flank one leg and one wing and her wing hung down uselessly really literally her skin was black and blue we're hoping we might be able to release her in the spring migration i think owls in general are not amorous as we think of it owls tend to mate for life and retain a mate through thick and thin provided one of them isn't killed of course and now that has been deprived of its mate we'll usually wait a couple years before it picks up another mate somewhere in the meantime uh some single owls have been known to uh sort of adopt a pair bonded pair and the cyst in the upbringing of their young rather in the position of an aunt or an uncle or a sort of a distant relative their eyes are excellent parents they would attack anything in defense of their young they'd attack a tank you see it doesn't really even bite me all that hard no you don't do that okay come on we'll all go for a walk hey daisy toto come back here come on back come on stop your barking come on morgan you're a good dog anyway so many people um just ring their hands about the completion of wildlife but uh don't do anything more about it after all even though we may not be affecting the total number of the species we are at least doing something positive and i think this is a thing we have to keep in mind come on maureen come on come on maureen come on anyway i feel that why wait until disaster strikes a species before we start to worry about it if we can with this opportunity here find out all kinds of things about the factors of uh affecting breeding and food supply all kinds of things even how to treat these various broken bones when the time comes that they are in fact in danger this is going to be very useful knowledge releasing owls is a very complicated business because you have to make absolutely sure that the bird has a reasonable chance of survival and this involves making sure that the bird can catch live prey this is the most critical part of release i think without owls uh we'd have a real problem with the rodent population they have really evolved as a control on rodents did you get any um uh owl meat from the butcher shop i was standing there waiting for somebody to serve me and one chat the chat in the butcher shop caught my eye and he said you're after all meat i suppose i said yes the fellow next to me sort of looked at me clearly and then he finally summed up enough courage to say i didn't know they sold all meat here oh dear been wondering what he'd been eating yeah just like your story when they were building the house here and people wanted to know why you kept owls and you said it was to sell the eggs i don't think they ever bought any eggs local stores since then remember the time we were operating on an island peterborough and we had two vets rather young vets there who helping us and of course i was holding the owl and leaning over the owl to look in the eyeballs we thought the owl was uh completely anaesthetized and suddenly out comes this great claw right on my bosom and i tell you i leapt up in the air and the and the two chaps were so embarrassed they didn't know what to do they just kind of rung their hands and said oh dear oh dear he had a mastectomy right on the spot come on come on come on come over don't let her take it room jerry lifting her whiskers is your friend terry i'm not pleased at all about morag being here pretty good oh yeah your sound effects are really something more again this is the typical defensive position of an owl when someone approaches there is a kind of an invisible line at a certain point distant from the owl and once you cross that line they get very upset and i've got a nice meal for this owl here we really have to feed owls live mice and it's amazing how they change their whole attitude towards food after one or two days on live mice isn't going to want a dead mouse anymore this is the way they take the master he's killed the mouse he would grab it by the head crush the skull and usually tip back his head and down goes the mouse normally about half the mouse at the full sculpt and then a little bit of a pause and then the the hindquarters and the tail go with the second gulp well how did that taste i have a pellet here from this owl the pellet is formed in the muscular stomach of the owl and it's just brought up by stages finally the owl opens his mouth and shakes his head and out it comes it has absolutely no odor at all it's completely clean and it dries out very quickly and when dry you can dissect them and learn what the owl has eaten she had three mice this size last night and this is the residue of those three mice all of the toenails from the mice all of the teeth parts of the hip and usually a part of the tail usually the small end of the tail this is our first stage hospital cage it's when they come in badly injured and i have to get them under heat lamp we've got one on up there or hand feed them or manipulate them in any way it's a very small cage at a very convenient height the owl feels secure in here and he can uh the territory's so small he doesn't feel he has to defend anything he just sits there and really you can do almost anything with them this one had a leg put in a cast a few weeks ago i think i can show you the cast there it goes all the way up to the knee from the base of the metatarsus there right up the top whoops there there he's a little bit unsteady on it it's going to come off in a week's time in that cast of course we'll also take an x-ray when we take the cast off and that will tell us a lot about the bone dr featherstone how do you recognize a healthy owl really the same as you tell any healthy animal from the brightness of his eye the color of his mouth a nice pink healthy color and his plumage are owls easy specimens to work with you have to take great care not to lose a finger the communist injuries owls sustain are probably being shot flying into um overhead wires being caught in traps and being hit by cars being shot probably being the most prevalent injury now it's a right wing that was fractured and what have you done well we put a stainless steel pin in and the pin is still in there and what we want to do today is to make quite sure that it's 100 and we can release him now i should explain that all bones are hollow we put the pin in the upper fragment and push it right through and that comes out at a point somewhere further up the owl's leg and we pull it back to here and then we align the fracture site like that and push the pin back in we then either cut the excess away with heavy shears or if we pre-cut it we just snap it off and this buries the point inside the bone this was the x-ray token when the owl was first presented to us nearly four months ago when we received this bird he was in a state of shock his right wing was fractured he was completely unable to fly or move it would have been a question of destroying him or of operating on him the fracture is fairly obvious it's right through both the ulna and the radius what we usually do is to take care of the larger bone we went ahead operated the bird went home and here's the picture that we took today and i think you can see that well in our opinion this is completely satisfactory you've got new callus here the overall picture of the wing is that it's 100 straight after a physical examination coupled with this x-ray i would say quite definitely this bird can be released and should lead a 100 percent normal life four six one eight one oh six one eight one and eight one all right now you're gonna put in the right leg let's put it on the right leg the owls that we release are all banded in the hope that if they are recovered somewhere we will have a history on the length of time that the bird was able to support itself and how far it went from the point of release let's see if it's circular and lots of room there yeah i think that's pretty good yeah that turns around all right there i think that's all right yeah got the numbers all ready to go she's all ready this is your big moment kid yeah [Music] well when we release an owl we have very mixed feelings there's a real feeling of accomplishment we have been the instrument of this owl being returned to the wild and that makes us feel very good that's good for the ego and makes us feel satisfied on the other hand there's a real pang as well we have the feeling is the bird going to make it i know it's been safe here and i could keep it for the rest of its life and comfort and health but it wouldn't really be serving the function for which it was evolved and designed so we have to let it go if there's a 50 50 chance it's going to make it in the wild but i can't deny a feeling of sadness [Music] how about that it's gone zoom over that way so [Music] bye [Music] you