Last Thursday, staff of the JHLT along with Susan Patla of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and several field trip participants conducted an owl survey at the Trail Creek Ranch. This is the third year in a row that we have conducted this informal survey to assess what species are present in this timbered area of the valley. Trail Creek Ranch is one of the few conservation easement-protected ranches in the area that is heavily forested, creating habitat for several species of owls including great gray, great horned, saw-whet, pigmy, and boreal owls. 

 

It was a treat to spend an evening gliding through the darkening forest on skis, listening for owls. While our world is busy with all sorts of noises, it is rare that we focus our hearing in on single sounds and really listen. Carefully moving through the dark, we skied to designated way points.  Then Susan would play a recording of an owl hoot, and we would listen for a response. This year yielded a few great horned owl responses, not surprising given this species’ wide distribution. Great horned owls are great generalists and nest nearly anywhere, often occupying old red tail hawk nests. 

 

Much more noticeable than the owl hoots was the level of noise pollution coming off Teton Pass. As we quietly moved through the shadowy trees, the billowing sounds of engines seemed to pummel the quiet world of the nighttime forest. We all speak of protecting air, water and land, but what of our soundscapes? Studies are being conducted in many National Parks around the protection of quiet, but humans are a noisy bunch when compared to the animal world that survives on stealth and silent swooping onto unaware prey. Sound pollution makes hunting by hearing all the more difficult. Most owls’ ears are offset, allowing them to triangulate the source of sounds and hear that little mouse rustling just one blade of grass. Skiing back to my own car, and heading home over Teton Pass, I made a conscious choice not to gun my engine, so that maybe at that moment a great horned owl had the opportunity to hear that pocket gopher, silently moving snow crystals out of the way beneath the snowpack as it traveled through the subnivean zone. 

~Adonia Ripple