Sketch and story by Tom Godin,
January 11, 2002

Remember that recorder that you had from music class, that hollow plastic stick with the holes in it? Unless you were one of a minority who discovered that the recorder was the musical instrument you were born to play, it had absolutely no use after the music classes ended. Well I have a new use for it. It can be resurrected as an owl call.

I never owned a recorder. The one I used belonged to my younger brother. I got interested in it when the Rolling Stones played one in the song Ruby Tuesday. Due to my limited musical ability all I learned to play was a bit of the Friendly Giant theme song, a little melody called ‘Early One Morning’, I think my mother called it.

After that, the instrument languished in a box until it was lost in a move or unceremoniously chucked. Who knows where all the unused recorders end up? I have seen a few at thrift stores.

The one I now own came from the dump. Actually it isn’t even a whole recorder. It’s the mouthpiece portion, which was missing the half with the fingerholes, when I found it. I thought it was a perfect emergency whistle to carry in my pack for those long, arduous journeys into the forests of the Cariboo. I’ve been carrying it for a few years now.

The other night, stricken as I was with cabin fever, I saw this stub end of the recorder laying on the table in the back room out of the pack. I put it to my lips and gave a toot. My ears perked up at the sound it produced. I cupped my hand at the end of the mouthpiece to lower the tone and gave another toot. The sound that came out was a very believable Pygmy Owl call!

I had just found an answer to one of early spring’s great problems. You see, about the end of February owls begin their spring mating and territorial calls. When I hear the sounds made by the Pygmy Owl or Saw-whet Owl I am always moved to imitate them by whistling. This whistle, if done accurately and relentlessly, will bring the small owls into view and often in close to the whistler. The problem with doing this call incessantly is that the lips often get tired and dry shortly after this calling begins. This can affect the purity of the owl imitation and fail to bring the little creature in to investigate.

With a recorder this problem could be solved! A steady pitch and tone could almost be guaranteed. All one would need to sustain is short puffing blasts of breath to pipe out the call.

Now all I had to do was field test the new owl call. It’s only January as most of you have sobered up know, so it will be a while before the small owls begin calling in earnest. There was another way to test the fidelity of the owl recorder.

I marched into the park in town and set out for the old ski hill. My plan was to test the call on the miniscule birds that detest the small owls, the Chickadees and Nuthatches. Often when these birds hear a small owl calling they will move toward it in a flock. Calling loudly as if to bolster their courage and support each other they go straight to the source of the call. This reaction among small birds is called mobbing. Once they locate the owl they crowd around calling and chattering but keeping at a safe distance. It is not really known what all this mobbing activity accomplishes but it is suggested that it lets everything in earshot know that a predator is close at hand. Eventually the Chickadees leave the owl and continue about their business. When mobbing is done by Gray Jays and the focus of the mobsters is a small owl like the Pygmy Owl, the attacks can get so vicious as to end in the death of the owl.

I picked a spot for my recorder performance carefully. I stood along an old roadway next to a large tract of spruce trees, a place I thought that a typical Pygmy Owl might be found. In the distance I could hear a Black-capped Chickadee call. Perfect! I began my calls.

I had practiced with the recorder in the outdoors several times before this, my first official stage performance. I found during practice that to strong a puff of breath caused the recorder to emit a shrill note, not at all like an Owl would make. Such a missed note would alert a listener to a fraud in the forest so I practiced until my individual toots sounded quite authentic. I also found I could increase the volume exactly as the Pygmy Owl does giving the calls a threatening, urgent quality.

Now I would find out if, what sounded like a Pygmy Owl to me, would fool the feathered critics. After my first few toots I heard a Black-capped Chickadee let out a danger call emphatically. I knew it had heard me and this call meant roughly, ‘listen, threat’. I continued my calls, just a few at a time. I could hear the Chickadees approaching. What they do after one lets out the call I heard is come together and approach the threat or stay quite still if it’s a predator they don’t wish to tangle with. But it was obvious they wanted to tangle with this recorder owl. I continued to call as both Black-capped Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches got to within 10 feet of me calling and nattering. I could literally feel their little black eyes scouring me for a telltale owl shape. Now, at such close range the recorder was really tested. I continued to make very believable owl sounds. So realistic were my calls that I began to feel like a Pygmy Owl with glaring yellow eyes, puffed up spotted feathers and jaunty tale tilted up. The Chickadees got right up to the tips of the branches of the tree next to me, some even flew right over my head. The recorder worked perfectly. I had no need to antagonize these birds further and I stopped calling.

I put the recorder in my pack and started to walk away. It was then that I saw the Chickadees employ a strategy I had not witnessed before. Unable to find the owl and probably feeling a little vulnerable having heard its call, the Chickadees split up and flew to the tops of several trees around me. It was easy to imagine that they were working in concert to search the surrounding area from higher vantage points for any sign of the predator that seemingly vanished.

I continued to walk. The Chickadees continued to follow me, still staying up in the treetops. I guessed that they had associated my presence with an Owl so I was suspect. When I had gone about 300 feet they finally broke off tailing me and disappeared. Now that was a potent demonstration of the recorder owl call at work.

I got my hands on a complete recorder later and found that the note I was duplicating using my cupped hand was a B on the recorder. Not unlike making a duck call talk, it is not sufficient to just play the B note, one must bring it to life with tempo and increases in volume just as the Owl does itself. For this one must listen to the Pygmy Owl and learn from its call. I am sure the recorder will make the calling of small owls much easier than it has been in past springs and my dried parched lips won’t tire in the heat of tooting. Bring on the Owls! I’m ready!