Trip Report: Jurgensen Owl Prowl - Oct. 18

This story originally appeared in the Jan/Feb 2018 edition of The Chicago Birder, COS's bi-monthly member newsletter. For more information about this, other membership benefits, and ways your support makes our work possible, take a look at our membership page.

By Edward Warden

It was a dark and stormy night. Or at least, that’s how our owl prowl at Jurgensen Woods in 2018 started out. We struck out that night though certainly not for a lack of trying. So when we decided to give Jurgensen another shot this year, it was a bit of a gamble. We didn’t have any recent records to suggest there were any owls there to begin with. However, Jurgensen has all the necessary criteria. Not only is the preserve a large, high quality oak woodland, it is surrounded by equally large woodlands of equal or greater habitat quality making it one of the largest contiguous chunks of habitat in Cook County. There’s no way there aren’t owls there…

Well, fast forward to a dark and actually quite pleasant October night in 2019, a group of 8 of us gathered to search. While it was well past sunset and the moon was equally below the horizon, our path through the woods was illuminated well enough by the ever present ambient city light to see which way was up, but not enough to spot the numerous downed branches. As our less than subtle band made its way down the crunchy gravel trail and through the rustling autumn tree debris, we stopped at several points to look and listen for any potential responses to the short bursts of audio we played.

Systematically at each pause, we played series of calls ranging from our smallest local species to our largest, and systematically, nothing in response. That doesn’t mean the night was silent however. Accenting the continuous hum of US 294, the woods were alive with chirps and squeaks and all sorts of small mammals. Several, it seemed, were in direct response to our very realistic owl calls such as the chipmunk (we think) which sounded off an alarm call for a solid two minutes. Alas, even as we wrapped up at our final stop, just shy of a mile into our hike, we still had no owls to show for our now thoroughly chilled extremities.

We stumbled our way back to the parking lot empty handed, when we were reminded of one of the cardinal rules of birding. ‘Always bird the parking lot.’ Does this timeless advice apply at night as well? With nothing to lose by giving it a shot, we played our audio one more time. The advice was tried, and true. Almost instantly, two distinct voices emanated from the trees. Distinct, but in no way clear. Indeed, veteran and amateur owlers alike were thrown for quite a loop by the bizarrely melodic squawks. After several minutes of ‘marco/polo,’ our group managed to get close enough to the calls to hear clearly what they were. After some deliberation, we determined these were in fact three (potentially more) young Great-horned Owls. Evidently the hatchlings from this spring were still employing their begging calls.

While visual contact was not made, at least by the humans, everyone was thrilled with the result and unexpected learning experience. We made our muted celebrations and parted ways under a just visible milky way. Always bird the parking lot, even at night!