What a hoot! Houston, Minn., is a national hot spot for studying owls

[GREAT HORNED OWL CALLS] CATHY WURZER: Oh, I love that sound so much. You've probably heard them in the dark of night--

[OWL SOUNDS]

--or on a quiet walk in the woods. I'm talking about owls, of course. Minnesota's home to a number of owls species, including the barred, screech, and great horned owls. What you might not know is that Minnesota is home to the only center in North America dedicated to their study. Here with us is Karla Bloem, Executive Director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota, where they teach visitors how to identify owls during small group owl prowls. Welcome to Minnesota Now, Karla. How you been?

KARLA BLOEM: Wonderful. Thanks for having us.

CATHY WURZER: I love owls so much. They're just so cool. But I got to ask you, to just tee it up here. Is there something about Houston County, which is in the far southeastern corner of the state, that makes it the best place for an International Owl Center?

KARLA BLOEM: Not specifically. We actually just happened to evolve here. We never had the intention of starting an International Owl Center. We were just doing a nature center as a trailhead for a bike trail, and things kind of got out of hand.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Clearly, though, you do have owls in the area and I'm assuming a number of different species.

KARLA BLOEM: Yes, we do. So the main ones in our area are great horned, barred, and Eastern screech owl, although in the winter and fall, there would be long-eared owls. Short-eared owls can pop through, occasionally a snowy owl. And saw-whet owls would definitely show up, although they're so small, they're not often noticed.

CATHY WURZER: What do we not know about owls that really appeal to you?

KARLA BLOEM: Well, there's so much we don't know about owls that nobody knows at all. That's why owls are so fascinating. You're never going to know everything, and there's so much that we don't know. And many species, even in tropical areas, we don't basic biology, like how many eggs they lay or breeding biology or any of that stuff. Those in the northern hemisphere are much better studied.

But basically, most of what the public has heard about owls is overgeneralizations because if you're talking about raptors in general, owls are just one of many species. So they get plopped in a box, like owls are nocturnal. Owls can turn their heads 270 degrees. Owls can do this, that, and the next thing. And most of that will only apply to some but not all owls.

CATHY WURZER: I'm curious as to-- I know you do some really excellent owl vocalizations, and they communicate, obviously, with those vocalizations. Would you know what a lot of them mean?

KARLA BLOEM: Great horned owls specifically, most but not all, I understand, because I've been studying their vocalizations specifically since 2004. But some of their squawks are still mind-boggling and baffling to me. When you have a male that's sitting there and doing these crazy, wild squawks and emphatic hoots and his mate is just sitting there sleeping and ignoring him and there's nobody else saying anything, what does that mean? No idea.

CATHY WURZER: He wants attention, probably. What's the most common owl vocalization? Would you do me the favor please of showing our audience that? What would be the most common vocalizations that you run into and what they mean?

KARLA BLOEM: So probably the two most common that the public are familiar with are great horned owls, their basic hoot. Just the [OWL SOUND] would be a male, and the female is higher-pitched with more notes, [OWL SOUND].

And that's a basic territorial hoot. So they're basically advertising, this is my territory, everybody else stay out, and also calling to their mate back and forth.

And then the barred owl, B-A-R-R-E-D, and you have to enunciate and differentiate from the barn, B-A-R-N, because that's very different species. The barred owl calls are very familiar to anybody that lives in their range because they do that "who cooks for you" call. That's [BARRED OWL CALL]

And you can tell male from female because the male has a lower voice with a shorter "all" on the end. And the female has a higher voice with a longer "all." So she's more [OWL SOUND].

CATHY WURZER: Beautiful.

KARLA BLOEM: So those would be-- those are the ones people would most commonly encounter because both species are fairly talkative.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, they are. And they're just, again, fascinating creatures. How can folks live an owl-friendly life?

KARLA BLOEM: Oh, fantastic question. So humans are the biggest problem for owls the world over, but here in the US, we're not normally doing things on purpose to hurt owls. We're just not familiar with how our actions are impacting them. So a giant one is using traps instead of poison to control rodents because we know that the rodenticides don't kill the rodents for a while. And even after they're dead, if an owl or anything else, for that matter, consumes the mouse, that poison transfers to that owl or other species.

So the simple thing is use traps. You can use bucket traps, zap traps, snap traps. We don't recommend glue traps because those catch other things that we don't want to catch. That's a huge one. Another really important one that most people aren't familiar with is leaving dead trees standing if it's safe to do so. Those dead and dying trees provide essential cavities for so many species of owls and other animals that require a cavity.

So that's going to be screech owls, saw-whet owls, barred owls, boreal owls, and then a whole bunch of other species. They have to have those cavities. So leaving them standing if it's safe to do so, critical for owl species. And if you have to prune them or take them down, please do it late summer or fall when the owls are not using those cavities. Two really important things.

But other things too, mowing less lawn because lawn is a biological desert. And if you can either leave some of your yard wild or landscape with natives, that will attract the critters that owls eat. People always ask, how do I attract owls to my yard? And that's a great way to do it. You can put up nest boxes and artificial nests for owls. There's a whole bunch of things you can do that we have listed on the Owl Center's website under the Owls and Us section.

CATHY WURZER: Now, I was on that website this morning, and I'm so disappointed that the owl prowls are all sold out. Why do you think people are so interested?

KARLA BLOEM: Well, because you don't just go out in the morning and say, oh, I'm going to go see an owl today, unless you're somebody who's really good and knows where to go. And even then, that's a bit of a random chance if you're going to see them. So the owl prowls are popular because we normally, not always, but normally, are able to get owls to respond. And our owl prowls usually sell out a month or sometimes even two months in advance. And we don't do more, even though there is demand for that, because we don't want to pester the owls.

So the key thing to know about an owl prowl, we're going out and doing owl calls. And the owls respond because they interpret that as an intruder in their territory. So that is not something you want to do on a regular basis within a territory. So we have about three or four different routes we use. We try not to hit any of those more than three times in a given year, and we don't do it during breeding season or when they're raising young. So that's why there's high demand, and we don't add more because of that.

CATHY WURZER: OK. So and when you're out there, is it for an hour or so, couple of hours?

KARLA BLOEM: Usually, we'll spend about 45 minutes inside first teaching everybody how to identify owl calls because you can identify species by their individual calls quite easily once you know what you're listening for. And then we go over the ethics of what to do, what not to do. Bathroom break, very important. And then we usually spend an hour and a half or two hours outside calling for owls, depending on how responsive the owls are. If everybody's talking, well, then it can be shorter. But if we really have to work it, then we might be out there longer.

CATHY WURZER: So I mentioned that the owl prowls are all sold out. But you have the big owl festival. Is that in March? Is that correct?

KARLA BLOEM: First weekend in March is the International Festival of Owls. Yes.

CATHY WURZER: OK. It was happening during that, so folks can come down and participate.

KARLA BLOEM: We do have some owl prowls there. I know the adult-only bus is-- we're selling tickets for that quickly. There's I think plenty of space on the family bus yet. But those, again, have limited space. And then the rest of the festival, we just have everything you could imagine times 12 going on.

So there's nest box building, pellet dissection, speakers, expert speakers from around the world, kids' owl crafts, owl-themed food, a bus trip during the day to look for birds and owls if we're super lucky, and geology and talk about natural history also. And--

CATHY WURZER: Yeah, I'm assuming you have an ambassador owl. You must have a couple of ambassador owls, I'm betting.

KARLA BLOEM: Yeah. We have seven owls at the owl center. Two of them are retired. So Alice, the great horned owl, is the one that got everything started. She's going to be turning 26. And the festival is actually a celebration of her hatch day. She doesn't come anymore. So we have younger owls that are working now.

So we have Uhu, the Eurasian Eagle owl, if she's willing to come to work, Ruby, the great horned owl, Piper, the American barn owl, JR, the Eastern screech owl, and Bea, the burrowing owl. So in our current facility, we're in a brick building downtown. It's an old department store, not where you would expect us to be. But that's how we're able to get started until we're able to build our future facility, which is something we're working on right now with an architect.

CATHY WURZER: OK. And I've seen your facility, and you can always-- you can spot it in Houston, Minnesota, because you've got the big mural. I noticed that there was a big-- it's an obvious place right in downtown Houston. So it's easy to find.

KARLA BLOEM: 6 foot by 8 foot owl faces in the front windows are noticed by most people.

CATHY WURZER: Yes. Yes, they are. Karla, I've had a really great time. Thank you for the owl vocalizations. They were epic. We appreciate it. And we'll make a note on the March owl festival.

KARLA BLOEM: Fantastic. Thanks.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Take care. Karla Bloem's been with us, Executive Director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota.