Hoot Hoot! I Passed!

Last night, after almost two hours of study, I passed my owl certification test.  I need to pass this before I do our annual owl route near Pierz.  This is the fourth, maybe fifth year that I've done this route and taken this test.  You'd think it would be easier.  I guess it is easier than the first year but it still took quite a bit of time last night.  More than I thought it would anyway.  I listened to all ten owl species calls first.  The ten species are the barn, barred, great gray, great horned, short eared, long eared, northen hawk, boreal, Eastern screech and northern saw-whet owl.  I heard them all twice.  I wrote down what I thought they sounded like.  The Northern Hawk owl, for example, sounds to me like a fast "Oooo" repeated 18 times like a bouncing ball followed by the sound of a slow gunshot.  Then I took the test.  The test involves matching the ten owls to 14 different sound clips.  It was hard!  We also had to learn the snipe, the woodcock and the ruffed grouse/spruce grouse sounds because it's easy to get them mixed up.  The thing about owl sounds is that each owl makes at least three different noises.  And the test doesn't always call for the most common calls.  Frankly I never could hear the sound of the boreal owl on the clips.  One sound clip sounded entirely silent except for one croak of a green frog.  I remember the loose banjo sound of a green frog.  And I guessed that was the boreal owl because of the process of elimination.  And I guessed right.  I didn't pass the first time I took the test.  I got two wrong.  And I didn't pass the second time either - only one wrong.  I only have five chances to take the test.  But I passed the third time which was good because it was getting close to 9 p.m. and I was tired of listening to owls.  I also have to pass a frog certification test and I think frogs are easier.  The frog test is hard because you never know if the answer to a sound clip is one frog, two frogs, three frogs or even four species of frogs but at least frogs generally have only one call.  Well, I guess the leopard frog and a long, slow snore followed by a chuckle but for the most part frog calls are more distinctive than owls.  If you want to hear the sounds of the Minnesota owls, go to this website: 

 http://www.hawkridge.org/research/springowl.html