PULLMAN, Wash. - Just whoooooo are you, baby owls?

Remember those nine adorable great horned owlets being treated at Washington State
University? In case you didn’t see the recent story, the palm-sized puffballs – five from one family and four from another – arrived at the WSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital in mid-April within a few days of each other.
 
They were only several days to one week old when the downy orbs with big yellow eyes and hooked beaks were identified as great horned owls.

 

"I’ve never had any this young,” said veterinarian Nickol Finch, who oversees the hospital’s Raptor Rehabilitation Center, where she has treated hundreds of owls in the past decade.

A couple of days after the story appeared, two readers in the Midwest emailed WSU to say  the birds looked more like baby screech owls than the great horned variety.

"I'm from Wisconsin and we have eastern screech owls over here that look very similar to your nine owlets. Being that you're in Washington, my educated guess is that these are western screech owls,” wrote Karissa Mohr, a wildlife educator at the Raptor Education Group, Inc., in Antigo, Wis.

Another birder - from the TreeHouse Wildlife Center in Dow, Ill. - said the same thing.

 

Photo courtesy of Owl Foundation of Canada

If the two birders were right, seeing baby screech owls is even rarer, making their stay at WSU all the more unique.
 
Were the nine precious owlets misidentified? And if so, how? After all, they look like great horns, and a person who found one set of the babies described the parents as great horns. Furthermore, in at least a decade, not a single screech owl baby has been seen at the veterinary hospital.

 

"Then, suddenly, we get nine? That just didn’t make much sense,” said Finch.

 

But after the little urchins spent a week at WSU, Finch observed something unusual about them: "They were smaller than what we would expect from great horns - and spunkier too.”

 

So, to be certain that they were, in fact, great horned owls, WSU posed the "what-are-they?” question to bird experts across the continent, not anticipating the immense interest in the debate. If you ever crave undivided attention, try contacting bird experts for help in differentiating baby great horned owls from baby screech owls.

"Yes, baby great horns and screeches are definitely hard to distinguish. They’re all small, gray and fuzzy with big yellow eyes,” said zoologist Stacy Campopiano of Canada’s Owl Foundation in Ontario.

 

While on the phone, she spent several minutes examining photographs of WSU’s nine baby owls. Finally, an answer: "I’m not seeing any black beaks. My guess is they are screech owls.”

 

Laura Erickson, formerly of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, has authored an owl book and has her own public radio show, "For the Birds,” produced in Minnesota. She, too, weighed in:

"The two species do look very similar when they’re young, but I think your guys would be triple the size by now if they were great horned owls. I think they look more like screeches.”

 

Erickson should know. A licensed bird rehabilitator, she has lived with a "hopelessly imprinted” screech owl for 12 years, taking him to schools and giving presentations.

 Oh, and one more thing.

"Are they feisty?” she asked. "If they’re baby screech owls, they’ll be more uppity than great horned owls.”

After a day of phone calls and emails, and another consultation with Finch who confirmed that, yes, the nine growing owlets were turning feisty, WSU had an answer.

"In the animal kingdom, things are not always as they seem. Very young creatures – especially birds – can be hard to tell apart in certain species,” said Finch. "Thanks to the keen eye of two readers who see more screech owls than we do here on the Palouse, we now know that our baby owls aren’t great horns, but screeches.”

 

Chances are you’ve never seen a screech owl. Here in the Northwest, they are less common than great horned owls and less common than the screeches that live back East and in the Midwest.

 

They’re also masters of camouflage, perching like statutes on branches with their gray mottled feathers blending into colors of tree bark. They’re also small. Where adult great horned owls stand two feet tall, screeches are just nine inches high and weigh little more than an empty coffee mug.

 

Their nests, usually burrowed inside tree cavities, pretty much go unseen and undisturbed by humans, said Campopiano of the Owl Foundation.

Screeches and great horns have prominent ear tufts, earning great horned owls the nickname, "flying tigers,” and screech owls the name, "feathered wildcats.” The ear tufts might have led the babies’ discoverers to believe the parents were great horns, she theorized.

While great horns say "hoo-hoo” to communicate, screeches make an eerie wailing trill that conjures images of full moons and dark shadows. To listen, go to the Owl Pages website.  

 

One more difference between the two owl types is that great horns are known to eat screech owls.

 

Watch out, little fellas.