Fowled by the Owl Prowl

“So we’re going to be staying here for two hours?” a kid in a blue coat tugged on his dad and asked.

I have to admit, I was thinking the same thing.

The temperature was in the 40s and I was pulling on gloves and making sure my coats – yes, I wore two – were zipped and buttoned. I tried to mentally prepare myself to spend the next two hours outside with about 30 people I had never met. All for the Piedmont Wildlife Center’s Owl Prowl.

The center puts on the Owl Prowl four times between November and February each year. Participants gather on the Mason Farm Biological Reserve, part of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, to call for and meet owls.

Our leader was Gail Abrams, executive director of the center, who said she has been calling owls for about 30 years.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is allow people to get out and experience nature and interact with wildlife in the right way,” Abrams said.

She told us we had to drive a short distance, and then we would head into the woods to call to barred and great-horned owls.

Carrboro resident Susan Baker and Durham resident Peggy Schaeffer offered to let me join them in their car. We followed Abrams’ van down a muddy path and across a small creek before reaching the spot where the prowl would begin.

Baker and Schaeffer, who met many years ago volunteering for the Peace Corps, could hardly contain their excitement.

“How many things can you do outside in January at night?” Baker asked.

We disembarked and gathered around Abrams under the light of a Blue Light emergency phone that seemed so out of place in the dark woods.

Abrams laid out the ground rules: stay close, be patient and don’t speak or use flashlights or phones.

“This is the last light you’re going to see,” she said, assuring us that our eyes would adjust to the darkness.

We began our silent trek through the woods. The stars were reflected on the dark water on both sides of the muddy trail. The kid in the blue coat grabbed hold of his dad’s hand, and I secretly wished I had someone to hold onto too.

Every so often, Abrams would stop the group to tell us about owls and call. She said every prowl is different, but this year we heard five owls from about five locations in the park.

Sounds cool right? Yeah, kind of. But the majority of the walk was spent in silence. My feet were aching from the cold, my nose felt like it was about to fall off and I had to scribble all of my reporters’ notes in the dark.

We spent two hours in the woods cooing “Who Cooks for You” — the phonetic way of calling a barred owl.

We did not see any barred owls.

We finally returned to that blue light, where we got to meet two of the center’s screech owls named Otus and Pigwidgeon, and a barred owl named Athena.

Abrams took this opportunity to illustrate one reason why owls are so important to the area. She said Athena eats about five mice a day, 140 mice a week, 1,825 mice a year.

“They are packing in a lot of rodents and protecting us from diseases,” Abrams said.

But people who litter, from orange peels to hamburger wrappers, are hurting the owls, Abrams said. The trash they throw attracts bugs, which attract rodents, which attract owls. These owls feeding by the road are then in danger of being hit by cars.

Nearly three hours later, Schaeffer, Baker and I returned to their Nissan Leaf to head back to the main parking lot. We took a wrong turn and quickly found ourselves stuck in the mud. It took four people to push us out.

When I was leaving to defrost my body, I couldn’t help but laugh at the experience.

Owls? Important and Interesting.

Owl Prowls? Not so much for me.

The kid in the blue coat could not be reached for comment.