Owls once provided the scares on a spooky All Hallows’ Eve
Long ago, before children went door to door trick-or-treating, it was the reverberating basso call of a great horned owl — “whoo-whoo” — or the shrill tremolo whistle of a screech owl that spooked the kids.
Owls signaled hobgoblins and witches threatening the neighborhood, children were told. They were scared to look at an owl lest the bird’s static dark eyes stare holes in their souls.
Owls could see in the dark, swivel their heads like a corkscrew and fly silently through the night just like witches.
Ancient druids in the British Isles believed ghosts prowled the nighttime neighborhood on the feast of Samhain, a pagan ritual later transformed by Christians into the Eve of All Saints or All Hallows’ Eve, later called Halloween.
But every night was haunted by ghosts and witches, signaled by the eerie calls of owls. Even Grimm’s fairy tale “Jorinda and Joringel” told of a witch changing herself into a screech owl.
Whew! Quite a load to carry for owls that merely strike terror in neighborhood rats.
Owls see rats with big, dark tubular-shaped eyes that have a large cornea and lens to collect maximum light. The eyes are immovable, which is why an owl looks at us with a spooky stare.
But the owl is simply fixing our location with binocular acuity. It has no interest in us, other than avoiding a threat. The owl’s eyes, along with its acute hearing, are instead locating rats.
Superior owl hearing derives from ears positioned asymmetrically on the head, one ear higher than the other. The offkilter ears allow sound waves to reach each ear at varying times, while a parabolic-shaped face channels sound to the ears. An owl can thereby place a rat in its auditory crosshairs.
By hearing alone, a barn owl can locate and snatch a mouse in total darkness. Now that’s spooky.
An owl’s swiveling head is necessary for a bird unable to move its eyeballs. So the owl swivels its head 135-degrees in either direction to get a view of its surroundings.
Ghostly flight comes from serrated structures on the leading edge of the wings that muffle the sound of air passing over them in flight.
When perched in a tree, an owl may go unnoticed due to its lackluster plumage.
Or as an old ditty goes,
A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he heard, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard;
Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?