The Garden Thyme Podcast
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The Garden Thyme Podcast
610 - Owls with the Owl Moon Raptor Center
Hey Listener,
In this month's episode, we’re talking with Suzanne Shoemaker, executive director for Owl Moon Raptor Center (https://owlmoon.org/) in Maryland, to talk about owls.
- Owl Moon Annual Festival- Nov 8, 2025, at the Blackhill Regional Park in Boyds, MD.
- Maryland Wildlife Rehabilitators Association: https://www.mwrawildlife.net
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- Native Plant of the Month: White Pine
- Bug of the Month: Owlflies
- Monthly Garden Tips: Leaving the Leaves
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The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
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Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript
S06:E10 Owls with the Owl Moon Raptor Center
Oct 2025
Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Rachel
Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland Extension presents, The Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Rachael.
Mikaela
I'm Mikaela.
Emily
And I'm Emily.
Rachel
In this month's episode, we're celebrating Halloween with the Owl Moon Raptor Center in Maryland. This month, we are joined by Suzanne Schumacher, the executive director for the Owl Moon Raptor Center in Maryland, to talk about owls.
Emily
It's going to be a hoot.
Mikaela
Great job, Emily.
Emily
Good job.
Mikaela
Well, welcome to the episode, Suzanne. We really appreciate you being here and coming I'm going to talk about all things owl.
Suzanne - OMRC
I don't need to do that. Thank you for inviting me. I like to talk about owls. They're one of my favorite birds.
Mikaela
Me too. So this may sound like a really basic question, but what is an owl? And maybe what differentiates them from other predatory birds?
Suzanne - OMRC
Well, there's a lot of things that make them different from all other birds, not just predatory ones, but they have their eyes on the front of their heads, which is unique to them. All the other raptors have them more to the side, including the Hawks and the Falcons and all the other birds of prey. They have great big eyes that take up most of their skull. They don't have much room in there for brain. They have incredible hearing, too. Their hearing is just as unique and sensitive as their eyes are big and beautiful. They hunt from both sight and sound more so than the other raptors, although they all do use sound. And that's important for the Hawks, too. Their eyes do not move in their socket. That's true, actually, also of the other birds of prey. And they have incredibly soft feathers, and they have soft margins on their feathers, which makes them very silent in their flight. That's how they are able to sneak up on their prey. You can't hear a sound when they're flying, unlike the Hawks, which you can hear the sound of their flaps. They have an incredible grip strength.
Suzanne - OMRC
All of the predatory birds, all of the raptors do. I think their feet are and their legs are real sturdy and their feet are real strong, so probably more so than the Hawks. In fact, I can say for sure, because we have to pride them open sometimes, and they have a stronger grip than most of the other birds.
Mikaela
Do you have some experience? That sounds like experience with a talon through the hand or something.
Suzanne - OMRC
They can be dangerous that way if you're not controlling their legs. They get a hold of other things, too, though. When you're trying to get them out of their cage, they get a hold of the mat that they stand on, and they get a hold of their perch, and that comes with them. So you can't separate them from whatever they're holding very easily. And yeah, it has been known to grab people, but we really don't have accidents like that at home because we're very careful. Also, they're unique in that their talons, they can rotate that hallux talon, which is the back toe that opposes the other toes. But they can turn that so that they have two talons in front and two talons behind. They can design their foot basically to adapt to whatever conditions they are trying to hold their prey under. The other species that can do that, though, is the osprey. They also can do that. They can turn their talon such that they have two in front and two behind, too.
Emily
That's cool. I feel like they could probably open a pickle jar pretty easily, then.
Suzanne - OMRC
They could open it just by punching a hole in it, probably.
Emily
They probably could do that, too.
Mikaela
Other than how cool owls are and that we all love them, why are owls important? What role do they fill in the ecological web of life?
Suzanne - OMRC
Well, their primary prey is rodents, which is something good for us because we live in places where there's lots of temptations for rodents populations to grow to extremes, such as rats. They also will eat rabbits and other small mammals. Anything that they can catch, basically, they'll eat. Our urban areas, they play an important role in keeping the populations of those rodents down, which also makes them susceptible to poisons. We'll probably come to that question later. That's one of the hazards that they face is rodenticides because they will They don't just eat live prey. They will eat something that's dead. So they generally don't notice things that are dead so much. But if they're moving and the owl will be attracted to them in any case. They are important for rodent control, for one thing, but they're just important because they're so unique and special. And I think that all species are unique and special and should be preserved.
Emily
I think we can all agree with that.
Rachel
That really brings us into our next question. What owl species do we have in Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic?
Suzanne - OMRC
We have quite a lot. The most common ones that we see here at All Moon are the great horned owls, the bard owls and the screech owls. The barn owls are the most populous, but we have also barn owls. We have saw wet owls during the fall, particularly migration, and sometimes, some of them overwinter here. We We have short-eared owls and long-eared owls, but they're very rare nowadays. They used to be more common. We have not ever seen a short-eared owl here at Owl Moon, but we have seen just a couple of long-eared owls over the course of their 20 years. So there are not very many of them around. There used to be more. The saw-white owl, I think that population is doing fairly well. They're being monitored actually starting this month, I think, or maybe starting next month, probably, they have a project where they're studying the saw-whet owls, which is a very tiny, beautiful little species that everybody adores just to look at. They migrate. Like I said, They're more seasonal, too. They'll be around this area from November to March, somewhere in there. We do have a population of barn owls in Maryland.
Suzanne - OMRC
That's fairly healthy, although it definitely needs to grow. Their populations were really badly depleted by rodenticides and changing of habitat from farmland to suburban areas. They don't do well in suburbia so much. So their populations are really pretty low now, and they probably will not grow. I mean, they'll grow, hopefully by... Some of the things that we do here at All Moon is to encourage their growth and their population growth is to put We install nest boxes all over the Ag reserve area in Montgomery County, and in Frederick County, we have some, too, where we install nest boxes and monitor them. And we have seen the population grow by doing that, because the first few years after we put those boxes out, there was hardly any occupation. But now, almost every year, we get several nests in our boxes, which is really exciting.
Emily
That's cool. So where and how do owls nest?
Suzanne - OMRC
No, no owls actually build a nest. They always either use the nest of other birds or they will occupy a nest box, which only not all owls will do that either, but most of them will. So if you can build a box to the specifications of that owl, for example, a six-inch opening for a bard owl, probably, and about a three-inch opening for a in diameter. That is for a screech owl. And there's instructions on how to do this online, of course. But you can build nest boxes because they will also nest in... The natural population, they would nest in cavities of trees. They just look for them and find them. So substitute a nest box for a cavity. They'll accept them very well. Okay.
Emily
I think I remember that. My mom volunteers at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge down here, and she's always talking about one of the owls bullying the eagles out of their nest near the season when the eagles have gone. She's like, The owls kick the eagles out of their nest again. And it's like, little tiny owl, big bald eagle. They're not going to mess with that owl, though. She comes in and goes, This is my nest now. Go be gone. So I always get a hoot out of that.
Suzanne - OMRC
That's interesting. Yeah.
Emily
For a more general question, you touched on the fact that owls' eye sockets don't move, but how can they rotate their head so far? I think this is something that's very iconic of owls that we all think about, is them literally being able to turn their head close to 360 degrees. How can they do that? Is it magic?
Suzanne - OMRC
They have a very long neck for one thing, but they also have ligaments that stretch between their vertebrae and also that allow them to rotate further around. It It's very hard to describe, but they do have extra long necks and they have extra stretch-ability and flexibility in their neck. They do need to have that because their eyes don't move in their socket. They need to be able to turn their heads to see. And they can do that very silently and very efficiently by rotating their head around. And yeah, they can go 270 degrees. They don't go the full 360, but it looks like it when they go 271 one way, and then they turn their head and go back 270 the other way, it looks like they're going all the way around. Yeah, they do have incredibly flexible and stretchable necks, it seems like.
Mikaela
Man, I would kill for some of that flexibility, to be honest.
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah, me too.
Emily
I just rotated my neck and two things went snap.
Mikaela
Yeah, you tried, didn't you, Emily? I tried.
Emily
I was like, some of the things just went creak. It doesn't hurt, but I was like, Oh, it's making creaking noises.
Mikaela
You're not an owl, Emily. Relax.
Emily
I'm not an owl.
Mikaela
So this is my favorite question, actually, is can you explain to listeners what is an owl pellet?
Suzanne - OMRC
An owl pellet is the un-digestible for them, byproduct of their prey. When they eat a rodent, for example, they usually swallow it whole, and they'll digest everything except the fur and bones, and they can't digest that. So rather than pass it through their bodies, they send it back up and regurgitate it as a pellet. And it's formed in the first part of the stomach. And they can just cough it up when they need to make space. So it's basically all the un-digestible materials that they eat. And they can't pass them through their body, so they just regurgitate them. Would you say that easiest way to try and find where an owl roost is to look for those pellets? Yeah, because they do. They're very habit-forming. They do the same thing pretty much every time they leave the nest, for example, or when they wake up from their sleepy daytime. They have a habit of going to a nearby tree, and it's usually the same tree, and regurgitate their pellet before they go hunting. So that lightens the load, and they do tend to go to the same tree for that. So if you see that, you probably should come back and look at dusk and see if you can see them land there.
Suzanne - OMRC
It's a good way to find the owls. Otherwise, they're pretty much invisible because they're very, very... They have incredibly good camouflage, like all of these.
Mikaela
I feel like I hear them definitely a lot more than I actually see them.
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah, and you'll hear their calls, but you won't hear them flying at all. No. It's a silent flight.
Emily
How often do owls have to feed?
Suzanne - OMRC
It depends on how much they get in a meal. If They probably need to eat. They need to eat every day like we do. We only feed them once a day here. And that's pretty much as long as you feed them a good size meal, that's plenty. They can eat and digest that's more than they need in a day, and they can actually go longer when they do between meals.
Rachel
Now, Suzanne, do owls have a habitat range?
Suzanne - OMRC
They do. I don't know that I can speak to any specific ranges, but they have a range that they defend, and then they have a range that they use. They're two different sizes. There's one If they have a nest nearby, they're not going to let anybody get within probably a couple of hundred yards of it without showing somebody, putting up a bite, noting it at least so that they can keep an eye on that intruder. Then they have an area that they will use that is bigger area than that that they might hunt in. I can't really tell you what the sizes of them are, specifically, but they're varied by species.
Mikaela
I meant to ask earlier when we were talking about species of owl in Maryland, does Maryland really clock snowy owl as having a presence or no, because they are accidental.
Suzanne - OMRC
I should have mentioned the snowy owl because we have gotten a snowy owl here before, too.
Emily
Oh, really?
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah. It's not a common occurrence, obviously, but we've gotten actually several calls about them. But we've only had one here once. That was a long time ago, well, several years ago, probably 10 years ago. But yes, snowy ows come down this way. It tends to be on a not every year basis, but it depends on how the population is doing up north and how the prey base is. But if there's a good hatch here and there's a lot of competition, And some of the owls will fly south, and as far south as they need to go to find good food that supports them. And they usually are along the Coast area because that tends to be where there's plenty of prey for them. So they're more coastal when they come down here, generally. But they've come, actually, you've had them in Montgomery County, too.
Emily
We had one in Dorchester County, where I live in Cambridge, I want to say last year or the year before, and it was just hanging out at the marina, and like, birders just flocked to it. It was like, flocked to come see it. But he was just hanging out there, and he'd stand next to white poles. So you'd be like, looking through binoculars, and I'd be like, Which one is it? And they're like, Oh, it's the white pole that just turned its head. And it's like, Oh, that's the snowy owl. But they're pretty big-sized birds.
Suzanne - OMRC
I didn't realize how big they were. Yeah, they're bigger than any of the ones that we normally get here.
Mikaela
Wow. I remember that, Emily, because it had... I don't know if it had its own Facebook page, but there was a page where people would post sightings so people could follow it and go and photograph it whenever it showed up in Cambridge.
Emily
That leads us to another question, which is, what is the normal habitat for owls? Do they prefer meadows? Do they prefer woods?
Suzanne - OMRC
They definitely have habitats that they prefer, and it depends, again, on prey, where they're going to be able to find their of prey, and also how accessible is that prey. There's some owls that have adapted very well to suburban life, and that's the bard owls in particular. But the great horned owls are doing pretty well with living among people, too, and the screech owls. So suburbia is a habitat, and it depends also on the amount of prey that is in that neighborhood. But they all have their individual... Each species has more individual characteristics that they look where the great horned owls tend to be more of a forested, bigger trees, a little deeper forest than the bard owls. But the bard owls will go there, and the great horned owls will live in suburbia, too. But that's adapting. They would prefer probably to have more forested areas. Yeah, the screech owls have adapted well. Also, they'll live in suburbia. The barn owls have not adapted really well to suburbia. Again, they need their farmland and open fields for their hunting. They like to have big wide open spaces and grasslands. So they're unique that way.
Suzanne - OMRC
But most of the owls that we see around here, we see them because they've adapted to suburbia, and they're doing quite well here. And there's things that you can do to bring them to your property, too. If you want to attract a nesting pair, you can put up nest boxes. You have to follow certain specifications, again, for the boxes so that they will find them accommodating. They have to be a certain size and a certain size opening, and the opening has to be a certain distance from the floor of the box and that thing. But those are things that you can do to help encourage them to move into your property if you want to get them there.
Rachel
I have an unrelated question because we see this in a lot of our wood duck boxes where you have to put a snake guard on it. Do you have to do that with your nesting boxes for owls, too?
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah, it's a good idea to do that. You may be saving the clutch by doing that. Generally speaking, they're pretty good defenders of their nest, too. So they don't have as much of that problem as the ones that are helpless when they're predators. The adults will defend against snakes and that thing.
Mikaela
Will owls actually eat snakes?
Suzanne - OMRC
Oh, yeah, they will. They'll pretty much eat it. Yeah. That's awesome.
Emily
Well, and then so that leads me to another question off of that, which is you said that they'll guard the nest. So when owls mate, does the male stick around to help with the babies in the clutch? Or how does mating and rearing young work in owl couples?
Suzanne - OMRC
They definitely are a pair, and they stay together and do the work together. The males will... The female does most of the incubating, but the male will give her a rest and sit on eggs also. So they share that duty They all hunt. They both need to eat. So the male will bring the female food while she's incubating to support her. He's the major provider also when babies hatch. But then they both can go. And there is a size difference between male and female. So there's an advantage to having the size difference because then the smaller male will be able to hunt certain prey, and the bigger female will hunt a different prey. So they cover the whole prey base with their different skills. They can take advantage of whatever's there. But that's definitely a cooperative thing with owls. They share the duties, and they do form pair bonds that are very strong, and they will have the same pair for more than one season. However long they can survive, I think they'll pair up. During the off-season, when they're not raising babies, there is a period of time there where they're not together with their mate.
Suzanne - OMRC
The owl's year is very interesting because they nest, usually starting now, actually, the great horned owls are already starting to nest now. They're starting to, at least, they're starting behaviors that lead to nesting. For example, they'll start calling and the males and females will reconnect that way. They start with the calling and then they meet up and meet, and eventually, as I said before, the male will provide for her while she incubates and he'll share in the duties. And that goes through the wintertime. From starting in the late winter and early fall, I mean, early spring, they'll nest in the process of setting up and laying eggs and doing everything that they need to do. And then by the time the babies are three weeks old, they're already starting to leave the nest three or four weeks old. They start branching then. If they're called branchers at that stage because they can't really fly, but they'll climb around in the tree and hop from branch to branch. And that's the time of year when they fall on the ground and wind up when people start calling us about babies. Sometimes they need help. Sometimes they need to get put back into the nest.
Suzanne - OMRC
Other times, they're old enough to just put them back in the tree and they'll find their own way to the nest. Sometimes people don't call us because they think that if they know something about owls and they know that they branch and they sometimes wind up on the ground, they still want to call us. It's not given that they're going to be able to climb back up into the tree, for example. It does sometimes help for us to intervene just to get them back into the nest. Or in some cases, the nest is falling apart because, again, these great horned owls use the nests of other birds that are left over from last year, and they fall apart easily. And if these babies are too young to be out of the nest, we have to supply them with a new nest to put them back in the tree. And we do a lot of renesting of owls when they start hatching. Because the nests are falling apart or something.
Mikaela
How do you get up high to put them back in?
Suzanne - OMRC
It's a tree climbing service. They volunteer their time with us. So we can get them- That's wonderful. They are Very wonderful people, yes. A lot of tree climbers love nature and love the owls and others that occupy the trees, for example, the squirrels and so forth. This is something you also need to consider is when you When you cut down trees in your yard, you don't want to cut down trees during nesting season because if you do it during the offseason in the fall, there's no consequences. But if you do it in the spring, you're going to bring down nests with your tree. That we get calls for that, too. We then have to put a nest box up in a neighboring tree, and then we have to monitor it and make sure that the parents find it and get the babies safely, and make sure that they're safe in getting fed and everything. We get calls a lot of times in the spring when people cut down trees. It's been a long winter, and now they want to get out back out in the yard again and work, and they make decisions like this, without really considering that they might be taking down a nest.
Suzanne - OMRC
So have your tree service look them over before you cut them down. Make sure that there's no cavities that are being occupied by bard owls or other critters. Have Have them wait until... Or if you can wait, just wait until later in the season before you start cutting down trees, because there's going to be nests in some of those trees.
Mikaela
Excellent advice.
Rachel
Suzanne, we've talked about pretty much the entire life cycle of an owl. Can you tell us what the lifespan is of our native owls?
Suzanne - OMRC
Well, if they survive suburbia, which is a lot of hazards, they can live to be about 25 years old, I've heard. I don't think they generally do live that long. They generally probably don't make it past about 20, but they can live a pretty good long life. Screech owls can even go to almost 20, I think 15 years or so as an old screech owl. They have a pretty good lifespan if they are successful and they can avoid accidents. But there's a lot of hazards out there for them.
Rachel
That's a pretty impressive time period.
Emily
So you've talked about the Owl Moonrafter Center, but can you give us some more information about what the center is, what it does?
Suzanne - OMRC
Well, we do rescue and rehabilitation of birds of prey, and that's primarily what we do, but we answer calls pretty much all the time. We end up getting calls about all different things, bird-related. We do answer questions or steer people in the right direction when they're confused what to do about a bird that they found that's injured. So we try to advise people. And sometimes it doesn't require intervention, and we can help them decide whether it does or not, if it's a problem or if it's a natural thing. We can help with that. But primarily, we do rescue and rehabilitation of birds of prey, including Hawks, eagles, owls, falcons. We make exceptions, too, sometimes, but generally, we'd only provide emergency care sometimes for some of the other more difficult birds to find help for, like the great blue herons and some of the bigger birds that are scary to people to try to handle, we sometimes can help with rescue and get them to another rehabber if we can't treat them ourselves. We advise people like we're talking about, some of the things here, some of the things that they can do to make their yard safer and more hospitable to birds of prey.
Suzanne - OMRC
So we do some education also.
Mikaela
Along that same vein, so if you had advice For homeowners and other citizens to help accommodate and protect native owl populations, what would those be?
Suzanne - OMRC
Primarily, just like I was saying before, just allow your dead trees to stay there because they like dead trees. Those are good for them. If you do it during the right time of year, you can just take the top off of them so that they can still have a cavity and it won't be a hazard to your house, for example, if it falls. You can put up nest boxes. You can just make sure that If you don't use rodenticides. Those are very deadly to the owls. We see them that a lot. A lot of these pest control companies will tell you that the dead rats will not get to where the owls can find them, but they do. So don't believe that. If you put out rodenticides, you're probably going to be at great risk of... Putting the owls at great risk of consuming rodenticide. Rodenticide is very deadly to birds of prey. So you don't want to do that. There's other ways of controlling rodents that are less of a hazard, though there aren't many, because sticky traps are just as bad, if not worse in some respects. Your best control is to encourage owls because they're good at controlling it.
Suzanne - OMRC
And other reptors will eat the rats, of course, also. They'll even take them out of dumpsters. So if you dispose of a dead rat Don't dispose it in an open container. Make sure it's in something that the birds can't get to because some of the birds of prey will dumpster dive. They don't just eat live things. They'll eat dead things, too. The other hazards are lead toxicity. That's another one that you have to be aware of. If you're a hunter, you don't want to use lead ammunition if you care about owls and birds of prey because the lead is toxic, and these birds do die of lead poisoning. I see I've got a case right now in house of a lead toxic bald eagle. There is a lot of lead around, and these birds will eat dead things. They'll eat roadkill deer Maybe we're shot or they'll eat hunter-killed deer that weren't found. And that includes the owls. It also includes all the hawks. They'll eat those things. Fishing line is a big hazard. Don't Don't leave any fishing line behind on the trees when you fish because they'll wrap up on the wing of a great horned owl or a bard owl or any other bird, and they'll be stuck up in the tree entangled in line, and they'll starve to death.
Suzanne - OMRC
Or if they're lucky, they'll get help, but they're not lucky a lot of the time. So if you're a fisherman or even if you just care about owls, just go out there and clean up the environment from hazards like that. The other hazards that that people don't think about is soccer nets and trampoline nets. Those kinds of things will entangle birds. When you're not using them, make sure that they're taken down or they're covered by a tarp or something. For example, soccer nets, you can take the net part off when there's not a game, or you can cover it with a tarp, that thing. Netting is a big hazard. If you have chickens, if you use netting around your chickens, you also have to be careful make that real tight and safe so that the birds can't get hung up in that, because we see that a lot, too. There's a lot of people that raise chickens, and they also care about the birds, so they call us when one gets tangled in their chicken coop netting. There is quite a bit that you can do as a homeowner and citizen to keep the owls safe and protected and encourage them to live on your property.
Rachel
Suzanne, since we've talked about hazards that owls can encounter, what should people do if they find an injured owl?
Suzanne - OMRC
It's a good idea to call for help right away because I know a lot of people don't want to handle them. And that's probably wise because if they're not really debilitated, they will try to defend themselves. But you can lay a towel over them. You can put a recycle bin or something like get over them. If you find one and call us. You don't want to just leave them like that, obviously. But if you can keep them in one place by putting a recycle bin over them or a towel over their blanket or something like that without them overheating or something, we will send people out to rescue them. If we can't walk you through the process yourself and if you're not comfortable handling yourself with our instructions, then we will make every effort to get to your property or wherever the bird is to try to get help and get it here so it can be treated. Call us if you have questions about babies, whether or not they're at a safe age to be left alone or whether or not they might be a baby and still be injured and we need help.
Suzanne - OMRC
Even if it's a fledgling, sometimes the fledglings will get themselves into trouble and need help. So, yeah, call us with your questions. We don't mind answering the phone and answering your questions.
Rachel
I found an injured owl on the way to work, probably about 15 years ago. And thankfully, I had a very large beach towel in the back of my car and a rubber maid. And I I just throw it. I throw it over the owl, scooped him up, put him in my rubber maid container, and took him to the emergency hospital on the way to work. And then he went to Tri-state in Newark. But it It was serendipitous. I used to go to work pretty early in the morning. It was 5: 45. He must have gotten hit by a car or something because he did not find it at all. He was just like, Okay, lady, whatever. He was fine. He recovered.
Suzanne - OMRC
That's good. Good for you because they don't always recover, but they also... Great to get them help even if they can't be saved, at least we can make it more peaceful and painless ending. Yeah.
Rachel
And then I gave them the location where I found him, and Tri-State released him in the same vicinity.
Suzanne - OMRC
We'll always take them back where they can figure they have the surf that they're comfortable with and know.
Mikaela
Quick follow-up question. So let's say All Moon Rapter Center is too far away. Is there some other resources or organizations across the state that you would recommend contacting?
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah, DNR will often refer people to different rehab centers Rehabbers, but also you can have a hotline, so you can call that.
Mikaela
Okay.
Suzanne - OMRC
You can also look up online. There's a Maryland Wildlife Rehabilitators Association website that has a directory in there for licensed rehabbers. You can call any rehabber, and we can refer you to another rehabber if you can't get them to us or if it's an animal that we don't treat.
Emily
We'll include a link to the Maryland Wildlife Rehab website in our show notes.
Suzanne - OMRC
It's the Rehabilitators Association. Yeah, Wildlife and Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. Yeah, and most of the animal control will sometimes refer people to us, too. Sometimes animal control will work with us to get birds to us. They'll do the rescue and bring it to us for you sometimes.
Emily
Okay, so I think that's wrapped up most of our questions. So one of the last questions we always like to ask people when we interview them is, how did you get into the job that you're doing?
Suzanne - OMRC
Well, I've always been interested in wildlife and wild animals ever since I watched Wild Kingdom when I was a kid. I've always had an interest in wildlife. So when I went to college, I focused on animals. Mainly, I was an animal science major to begin with, so I was mostly studying some of the farm animals and that thing. But then I went on for my bachelor's and master's degree, starting with wildlife biology as a major when I was... At that point, I was interested in all wild animals, and I knew it early on. So I was focusing on wildlife. And then I went to graduate school in wildlife, and I did a coyote study. And while I was doing the coyote work, I learned a lot about birds of prey just by observing because it was really fun. It was a really open habitat. And then I got interested in rehab work, volunteering at Second Chance while my kids were young. Then I started my own center when we moved out to where we live now, which is in Voids, near Germantown. I decided to start my own center and just specialize in birds of prey because I wanted to keep it more manageable and do a really good job with them.
Suzanne - OMRC
Now we're huge. As far as numbers go, we get a lot more than I can handle by myself now. I have a lot of volunteers, and we have our paid staff, so we're growing, and we might even outgrow my house pretty soon here. Who are going to be looking to try to move into a bigger facility and be able to take care of a larger number of birds of prey because we're outgrowing my space here.
Mikaela
That's pretty amazing.
Suzanne - OMRC
Yeah, it's pretty cool. We had a lot of volunteers, and they're really good people. We are trying to grow to meet the needs of the wild birds that we see, the wild raptors. Anything that you can do to help us out, if you know of properties that are suitable, or if you're interested in helping us out, give us a call, and you can volunteer, too. We do take volunteers if they can devote at least several hours a week to us, or even less if they just want to be involved with rescuing and transporting birds of prey. We can also use help with that.
Mikaela
And we'll include the link to your website in the show notes as well.
Suzanne - OMRC
Okay, great. So Alamun is having our big fundraising festival at Black Hill Regional Park at the Discovery Center there on November eighth. It's going to be a celebration of birds of prey. We have all kinds of birds of prey. We'll be on exhibit there. We'll have flight demonstrations. We'll have a couple of releases, we hope, of birds that have been treated at ALMU, and also all kinds of activities for the kids and for families. And we'll have educational talks about birds of prey. So it's a great festival. It happens every year at Black kill Regional Park. We're going to be back there this year on November eighth, which is a Saturday, from noon to 04: 00 PM.
Emily
I don't know much you guys, but I'm thinking road trip.
Mikaela
I am too. That's what I was just thinking. I just put it in my calendar.
Emily
Marker's down for it. We're there.
Suzanne - OMRC
It is a really fun event. Hope you can come and I'll meet you there.
Rachel
Thank you so much for joining us today and your willingness to talk about your love of owls and how we can help them survive in our environment.
Suzanne - OMRC
Good. Well, thanks for inviting me again.
Mikaela
So my native plant of the month is white pine, pinis strobus, and it's been a while since I've shown the trees some love. It's been even longer since I showed an evergreen some love on my list. But the Eastern white pine is a majestic conifer native to the northern reaches of the US and in the Appalachian Mountains. Technically, it's only native to the western part of Maryland, but you can still find white pine planted across most of the state, including the Eastern shore, although it doesn't do as well over here. This species towers to over 50 to 80 feet tall. It gets to be really tall, especially for a conifer. It grows in naturally dry, sandy or rocky soils, but it does have a little bit wider tolerance for other conditions. However, it has a very low tolerance for air pollutants, salt, and alkaline soils, so this would not be a good choice to line state highways or where you're having a lot of motor vehicles. I think of this tree as having a very significant role as an important timber tree. In the 18th, 19th century, most large white pines across the US were harvested because they had very lightweight, straight-grained wood.
Mikaela
There's a lot of records for the demand of white pine as early as the 17th century for building ships. It may have even factored as one of the reasons for instigating the Revolutionary War. I won't get into that It's a really interesting story, but that's probably for another time. Mostly is like a resource that the British really wanted and wanted to tax, and the United States said no. While white pine remains a significant landscape tree, forests bear more of a newer generation after a lot of the overharvesting in previous centuries. It does make an attractive landscape tree. It has a very nice shape, and it's also been touted for its use in the Christmas tree industry. There's still a lot of Christmas tree operations that grow white pine. Again, one of the reasons I chose the white pine as this month's native plant because of the significant contribution that evergreen trees and shrubs make for bird habitat. Bird habitat in general, but specifically owls. As nocturnal creatures, owls like the dense branches and canopy that evergreen trees offer during the day, as well as providing cover for hunting by night. Large and older trees, such as white pines can offer cavities and snags that are really important shelter for owls to raise their young as well.
Mikaela
Eastern white pine is the only Maryland pine that has needles in clusters or bundles of five, and they're very soft and pliable. It's one of the easier evergreen to identify. The color of the needles ranges from deep green to almost bluish in color, so very attractive. The bark itself is very smooth and attractive as well. In Maryland, some of the oldest specimens of white pine can be found in Garret County's Swallow Falls State Park, and they're reported to be aged up to 360 years old. It should also be noted, though, that white pine has a high flammability rating, so it's not recommended to be planted close to homes or structures or in large amounts near those buildings in regions where fire risk is really high. I say plant white pine carefully as it a little bit picky about its habitat. It does prefer a more cooler climate, a cool, humid climate to be specific, and does not tolerate heavy wet soils very well. So this would be better suited for zones like three to eight tops. It's sad news for Eastern Shore people, but they really don't do well around here. I have one that the previous homeowners planted, and it is the saddest-looking tree, but it's still going.
Mikaela
It's still going. Yeah.
Rachel
They're just not meant to be here.
Mikaela
And that's my native pick of the month. Oh, it's a great pick.
Mikaela
All right, Em, you have a really fun Bug of the month.
Rachel
I can't wait. You do. I can't wait to hear you talk about this.
Emily
I know, although part of me regrets not doing something more spooky for Halloween. I also leaned into the owl theme more. So this month's Bug of the Month is owlflies, which is the family Ascalufidae, which is in the order Neoroptera, which is where the same order for a lot of our other beneficial predatory insects are. Things like antlions and lace wings are all in this, and they're known for having net-like wings. It's the net wing insects is the order. Globally speaking, we've got about 450 species found worldwide with the largest amount of diversity of species down in the tropics, but we do have a handful of species that are found here in the Mid-Atlantic. The adults resemble a dragonfly, but with a butterfly head. You could say that they're dressed up as It has a dragonfly and a butterfly for Halloween. They're going to have that dragonfly shape, so that long abdomen. Their wings are clear. Sometimes they've got patterns on them. The front pair and the hind pair are about the same length. So very similar to what a dragonfly would look like. Equally as good fliers as dragonflies are. But the difference is that they have these very long antenna that have clubs at the end, and they have really big eyes that bulge a little bit more compared to a dragonfly.
Emily
Their The adults can get to about being 2 inches in length, and they have a wingspan of about 3 inches. The antenna themselves can be anywhere from about half an inch to an inch long, depending on the species. Again, they have these really long antenna. If you see what you think is a dragonfly, and then you notice it's got really long antenna, it's not a dragonfly, it's an owlfly instead. Some will rest with their abdomen hanging up in an angle as though it's a perch, and this makes them look like they're a twig. It's a form of camouflage. To prevent predators from feeding on them. The adult owl flies are mainly copuscular, meaning that they're active at dawn and dusk, or some species are nocturnal, but most of the adults are not found out in the daylight. You can oftentimes find them attracted to lights that you have on at night time, and they are predatory. You will see them just like dragonflies where they fly around at night and snatch up any of those insects that are flying through the air. Female owl will lay eggs in a line on a twig in trees.
Emily
In addition to these round, fertile eggs, she will also lay a batch of smaller trophic food eggs nearby. These eggs won't hatch, but however, will serve as the first meal for her hungry larvae and also prevent them from cannibalizing each other. The young larvae will then eventually move down to the ground where they hunt, eat, grow, and then eventually, molt, and then pupate. The larvae are really uniquely looking. I will be honest, I don't think I've ever actually seen one of these larvaes. I'm fascinated to go hunt around in the leaf litter when I'm closer to the season when you would see these to see if I can. So think of this really flat, grey-brown, tanny insect with these massive big mandibles up front. But then on top of that, their body is covered with fringe, so they're fuzzy. So giant, flattened, big teeth, little fuzzy bugs that you can find in your leaf litter, and they are predatory, and they are just going around eating anything and everything that they can catch and eat. Now, on top of being covered in fringe, some species are also known to glue debris like sand or other things onto their back to help with camouflage.
Emily
Once they've muled it several times as a larva and they're ready to pupate, they will make a selkin cocoon down in the leaf litter. This is another great reason to leave leaf litter. In this particularly leaving your leaf litter in the springtime or in the summertime. You find the adults most commonly here in Maryland in July. The most common species found in Maryland is the four-spotted owl fly, which which has these four big spots on its wings. Fun facts for Rachel, because I know Rachel loves fun facts, and more importantly, Rachel loves fun facts about names that involve Greek mythology. The family of this name, Eskupaleida, comes from the Greek mythology from a fellow called Escapophilus, I don't speak Greek, guys. I'm sorry. Who was the caretaker of the orchard in the underworld. Now, he is a little bit of a stinker in that he witnessed Persephone eating those pomegranate seeds, and rather than keeping his mouth quiet so that she could go back up and spend all 12 months with her mom up in the sun, he ratted her out, which is why we have seasons, because her mother, Demetria, got really mad about her having to spend six months with Hades because she ate those pomegranate seeds.
Emily
So the story goes that Demetria got so upset about this that she punished him to live under a rock. And then when she found out that someone released him because they felt bad for him, she turned him into an owl, hence the common name, owlflies. You are truly a girl after my own heart, 100%. Yeah, I was like, This will make Rachel's heart grow three sizes.
Rachel
There's some type of mythology had to happen.
Emily
I know. Some mythology had to happen. So that's my fun mythology facts for a really weird bug, a very fun bug, but I think sometimes a forgotten one, an overlooked one. I think a lot of times people see these, and especially when they're flying around quickly, you see and you're like, Oh, it's a dragonfly. But if you think you found a dragonfly, you're nowhere near water, it might be an owl instead. So yeah, that's my bug of the month.
Rachel
I think they have the cuteest antenna.
Emily
They do. The big ones with the little bobs on them? Yeah, they're so cute. And honestly, the larvae I know you're mean and grumpy-looking, but I also love them for it. They do look fierce. They do. They're very fierce with their big mandibles and their fringe.
Mikaela
All right, Rachael, you're going to tell us what's going on this month. Do you have some tips?
Rachel
Some tips, some tips. I know that we are all like, cozy up in the wonderful, dramatic essence of fall. I'm going to talk about leaves today. As Emily touched on with the importance of leaves in our gardens, our fallen leaves have so many benefits. Leaves form a natural mulch that helps suppress weeds, and at the same time, they can fertilize our soil as they break it down. Why spend money on mulch or fertilizer when you have a free source from our fallen leaves. Simply let leaves lie where they fall or move them onto your garden beds to protect your plant's roots, suppress weeds, preserve soil moisture, and eventually, they'll break down and return nutrients into our soil. Leaves are also a great source of habitat and insulation for many of our native flora and fauna. Many native insects rely on leaf litter for safe, insulated places to overwinter, like our butterflies and moths, luna moths and swalotail butterflies, among others, overwinter as pupae or chrysalis camouflaged within our leaf litter. Native bees include including endangered ones like our rusty patched bumble bee, nest or burrow under leaves, leaf piles to survive our cold winters, and then other insects like spiders and beetles and fireflies spend a significant portion of their life cycle in the moist, stable environment that is provided by leaf litter.
Rachel
Leaf litter is also a great foraging ground for our birds. Many bird species, such as our thrushes, forage through leaf litter for insects and invertebrates that live there. This provides a crucial food source, especially during our lean winter months. Not only that, leaves provide hibernation for small mammals and amphibians. Small creatures use the leaf litter for shelter and nesting materials, like chipminks and squirrels use leaf litter to insulate their burrows or for the winter. Then toads and turtles and salamanders burrow in leaf litter to escape freezing temperatures and predators. We talked about this in October of 2022, but our Eastern red bats may even tuck themselves into leaf litter during our cold winters. They provide such a crucial benefit, not only to our plants and suppressing weeds, but our native fauna. I should also caveat with leaves. If we are trying to provide a suitable habitat for overwintering insects and amphibians, we are not chopping those leaves up beforehand. We're leaving them in their natural state because you could be chopping those leaves up thinking, Oh, I'm going to have a habitat for luna moths. But you probably are chopping up the chrysalis of or cocoon of a luna moth because they use leaves as part of their cocoon.
Rachel
So don't chop them up first. Just put them down in their natural state. This one goes out to our wonderful IPM specialist, Maddie Potter, for making me think about leaves for October. In our vegetable garden, there's still time to transplant lettuce, kale, and collards. If you haven't cleaned out your summer garden, I completely get it. It's a task that we don't want to do. But now is the time to rip out any of the plants that are no longer productive. And remember to disinfect any of your cages or stakes. First, you're going to remove all your dirt and debris. You're going to spray that down with a hose. Dirt and debris can deactivate a cleaning solution, so you want to get that off before you disinfect. Mix up a 10: 1 bleach solution, so that's nine parts water, one part bleach, and spray down your metal cages or wipe off your stakes with that bleach solution. If you're using wooden stakes, you want to soak them for about 30 minutes if you can, to get off any disease so that you don't transmit that to your plants for next year. Make sure your vegetable garden soil has been covered with a cover crop, or you can do a lasagna garden, or you can plant some garlic, and then it'll be covered for eight months.
Rachel
It's also a wonderful time to test your soil to see if you need to make any amendments before winter hits. We have a really great page on our Home and Garden Information Center website on soil testing and soil testing labs in our area. If you're going to test your soil, make sure that you use an accredited lab that is with in your geographic region. We're not sending our soil test to an area that we do not live. If we're in the northeast, we're going to use a soil testing lab in the northeast. That's all I have for this month.
Mikaela
Excellent advice. Thank you. Yes. I know. I've continued to wonder, especially with a lot of the new research coming out, why people hate leaves so much. I think it's just that we don't have faith that they're going to break down and disappear. And I think there's a very common conception that if you leave the leaves, it looks messy, and then therefore you are lazy. But we are giving everybody just free permission to be lazy. You're doing it for the pollinator Just tell people that.
Rachel
I really like to go to people's properties and see the different uses of natural products that some gardeners use. I love it when I see people using pine pine bark or pine needles or even sweet gum balls. I just love that different texture that you see in the landscape when people are using natural products. Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail. Com, or look us up on Facebook at Garden Time Podcast. That's Garden, T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go. Umd. Edu/h gic. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.
Emily
Goodbye. Bye.
Mikaela
Stay spooky, all. Hoot, hoot. Hoot, hoot.
Emily
That was a good one.
Mikaela
That was a good one. You like that? I do that to my kids, and they don't know if it's me or not. They'll turn around and look at me. I'm like, It's an owl in the woods.
Rachel
See, you need to train them that when you do that, they answer no matter where they are. Hoot, hoot. And then they could say, Hoot, hoot, back.