Birds of prey: Audubon Society presentation highlights Earth Day event in Bradford Woods

Be careful with those apple cores.

“If I just throw it out my window, sure, it’s going to degrade. It’s going to decompose,” wildlife habitat educator Nick Stahlman said. “But what’s most likely to happen before that happens is some sort of animal is going to come investigate it and want to eat it.”

Lurking above the roadside, though, may be something that wants to devour the investigator. And as it swoops downward, unaware of a rapidly approaching vehicle:

“This is where most of the injuries to owls come from,” Stahlman said, and it’s most likely what happened to a feathered friend he brought to the reserve in Bradford Woods on April 27. “She had a lot of microfractures, as well as the larger injury to her eye, itself.”

He further explained that the small screech owl he was holding is blind in one eye, effectively preventing it from surviving in the wild. Its home is at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel, headquarters for Stahlman’s employer, the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.

As part of the Bradford Woods Conservancy’s annual Earth Day celebration, Stahlman gave a presentation on birds of prey, focusing primarily on owls. Along with the warning about apple cores — and, of course, litter in general — he provided some intriguing details about the carnivorous avian species known as raptors.

Some nab their victims using extreme bursts of speed. The peregrine falcon, for example, can dive at more than 200 mph as the fastest member of the animal kingdom.

Owls, on the other hand, move comparatively slowly, and as nocturnal creatures they tend to hunt at night. So they’re equipped for optimal vision.

“Each eye takes up a little over a third of their entire skull,” Stahlman reported, and despite owls’ reputation for wisdom, they’re “not very intelligent, necessarily. Their eyes are taking up the vast majority, because they really, really need to take in what tiny bit of starlight might still be around, or moonlight, to see their prey.”

Unlike humans, owls are unable to glance from side to side. To compensate, they’re able to turn their heads at angles of up to 270 degrees.

Stahlman mentioned four types of owls as most common in Western Pennsylvania, the largest being the great horned, which can grow to nearly 3 feet tall with a wing span of 4½ feet. It has an exceptionally strong talon grip, applying a squeeze of up to 500 pounds per square inch.

“When they grab their prey, it’s game over,” Stahlman said. “No question.”

Down a notch in size is the barred owl, with a call that sounds sort of like the question: “Who cooks for you all?”

“There’s a subspecies in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” Stahlman joked, citing an alleged Pittsburghese variation: “Who cooks for yinz?”

Close to the barred owl in name, the barn owl actually is part of a completely different taxonomic family, as far as ornithologists are concerned.

And barn owls, especially the males, are loud.

“This is where the stories of the banshee ghosts come from,” Stahlman said as he played a recording for his audience. “Boy, do they have that scary sound.”

Another recording was from the screech owl, the region’s smallest type at generally half to three-quarters of a foot long.

“To me, it’s like you took a helium balloon and gave it to a horse,” Stahlman said. “Why this one is called the screech owl — not the barn owl — I’ve always questioned and never gotten a good answer.”

The bird he brought from Beechwood actually has an unknown gender.

“We actually say ‘she’ based on weight,” he said. “When it comes to raptors, the female is almost always larger than the male, and it’s usually significantly so.”

On the other hand, “She’s never laid an unfertilized egg.”

Following Stahlman’s presentation, Earth Day celebration guests were treated to a picnic lunch, and the event also featured arts and crafts, giveaways and opportunities to learn about monarch butterflies and praying mantises.

The sponsoring organization, Bradford Woods Conservancy, serves as the steward for the Bradford Woods Reserve, 4.5 acres of Allegheny Land Trust-owned property kept in a natural state for the enjoyment of everyone.

For details about the group, visit bradfordwoodsconservancy.org.