Whiskey Pete, the Whiskered Screech Owl
photo credit: Satheesh Rajh Rajagopalan
Least Appreciated Owl in North America
January 20, 2025
You know how I have been writing to Wikipedia and other online resources to complain about their lack of coverage about we Whiskered Screech Owls? Well, apparently the writing campaign has paid off. The Academy got wind of my complaints and so they gave me the award for Least Appreciated Owl in North America at the North American Owl Awards ceremony last night.
As you can see, however, I am not exactly jumping up and down for joy. Sure, it's a good start. People finally appreciate me for being underappreciated, and I appreciate that. But there's so much more work to be done when it comes to publicizing the existence of Megascops trichopsis.
I picture a world in which everybody knows as much about we Whiskered Screech Owls as they do about Great Horned Owls or Barn Owls, a world in which we're a common topic of conversation at dinner tables, a world in which the striking mug of the Whiskered Screech Owl appears on baseball caps and T-shirts and on computer mouse pads. As things stand now, I doubt that most Americans have even HEARD of us Whiskered Screech Owls, let alone learned anything about us.
So my writing campaign continues. I think I'll write to the production company that made the movie "Hoot" next. That film really tugged at the heartstrings by depicting the threats posed to the Burrowing Owl by overdevelopment and greedy property developers.
The problem is, we Whiskered Screech Owls are just too resilient. We don't face any major threats that could tug at the heart strings of the movie-going public. But there are plenty of plot lines we could pursue. Let's see...
How about a sci-fi picture about the first Whiskered Screech Owls to land on Mars? Or no, wait a minute! Humans go to some distant planet and find that the only residents there are Whiskered Screech Owls. Or maybe alien Whiskered Screech Owls come to Earth from another planet!
What? I'm just brainstorming!
Listen to the North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Zimman Field at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts!
January 20, 2025
You know how I have been writing to Wikipedia and other online resources to complain about their lack of coverage about we Whiskered Screech Owls? Well, apparently the writing campaign has paid off. The Academy got wind of my complaints and so they gave me the award for Least Appreciated Owl in North America at the North American Owl Awards ceremony last night.
As you can see, however, I am not exactly jumping up and down for joy. Sure, it's a good start. People finally appreciate me for being underappreciated, and I appreciate that. But there's so much more work to be done when it comes to publicizing the existence of Megascops trichopsis.
I picture a world in which everybody knows as much about we Whiskered Screech Owls as they do about Great Horned Owls or Barn Owls, a world in which we're a common topic of conversation at dinner tables, a world in which the striking mug of the Whiskered Screech Owl appears on baseball caps and T-shirts and on computer mouse pads. As things stand now, I doubt that most Americans have even HEARD of us Whiskered Screech Owls, let alone learned anything about us.
So my writing campaign continues. I think I'll write to the production company that made the movie "Hoot" next. That film really tugged at the heartstrings by depicting the threats posed to the Burrowing Owl by overdevelopment and greedy property developers.
The problem is, we Whiskered Screech Owls are just too resilient. We don't face any major threats that could tug at the heart strings of the movie-going public. But there are plenty of plot lines we could pursue. Let's see...
How about a sci-fi picture about the first Whiskered Screech Owls to land on Mars? Or no, wait a minute! Humans go to some distant planet and find that the only residents there are Whiskered Screech Owls. Or maybe alien Whiskered Screech Owls come to Earth from another planet!
What? I'm just brainstorming!
Listen to the North American Owl Awards ceremony, live from Zimman Field at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts!
The Least Appreciated Owl in North America
November 30, 2024
Ha ha! You'll have to pardon my laughter, but this Wikipedia page about my species amuses me1. Do you know they have an entire book's worth of information on the Long-Eared Owl2. An entire BOOK! And yet their write-up on yours truly, the Whiskered Screech Owl, barely takes up one single page! One single page! It's prejudice, I tell you! Sheer prejudice!
I'll have them know that I am a specialty owl here in Arizona. Just ask the Tucson Audubon Society if you don't believe me, THEY'LL tell you3. And I am rare, girlfriend, I am telling you! There are only 500 of me in the United States according to the American Bird Conservancy. 5004!
Besides, where is their sense of poetry at Wikipedia? I live in the so-called Sky Islands of southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, thousands of feet above the desert floor5. How cool is that? I mean, where does the Burrowing Owl live? On a golf course6? And yet they afford that creature far more virtual real estate than I have ever received on their crowd-sourced compendium.
Humph! It plucks my last brown-and-grey tail feather!
Do you know what? I'm going to compose a letter here and now to demand my fair share of coverage at Wikipedia. You just see if I DON'T!
Do you have a quill I can borrow? Oh, never mind, I've got plenty, right? In fact, I never leave home without them.
Let's see, now, uh...
Dear Mr. or Mrs. Wikipedia:
I am a Whiskered Screech Owl living in the Chihuahua Mountains of Southeastern Arizona, in the Coronado National Forest, close to the town of Portal. I am writing to call your attention to the dearth of coverage that my species has thus far received in your virtual encyclopedia. Your entry concerning the Whiskered Screech Owl is scarcely one printed page in length7. One single page. That is far less space than you have devoted to each of the other 18 species of North American owl. Indeed, you devote an entire BOOK's worth of content to the Long-Eared Owl8!
Please be so good as to tell me why your coverage of North American Owls is so dreadfully unbalanced? And why is your entry for the Whiskered Screech Owl, in particular, so scanty and bereft of particulars?
To illustrate the problem here, I have taken the liberty of counting the words that Wikipedia has expended on each of the 19 North American Owl species in its entries about the same. The results are listed below and ordered by word count.
Word Count for Wikipedia articles about North American Owls
- Long-Eared Owl 18,111
- Snowy Owl 17,190
- Great Horned Owl 15,084
- Barred Owl 12,966
- Eastern Screech Owl 4,610
- Burrowing Owl 3,204
- Barn Owl 3,108
- Great Gray Owl 2,183
- Northern Hawk Owl 1,942
- Boreal Owl 1,933
- Northern Saw-Whet Owl 1,912
- Spotted Owl 1,695
- Elf Owl 1,511
- Short-Eared Owl 1,355
- Western Screech Owl 897
- Northern Pygmy Owl 820
- Ferruginous Pygmy Owl 735
- Flammulated Owl 645
- Whiskered Screech Owl 262
Really? 262 words for us Whiskered Screechies and 18,111 for Long-Eared Owls? Those numbers differ by a whole order of magnitude! How do you justify this discrepancy, pray?
I know that you have created a separate article about Screech Owls in general9, but that didn't stop you from giving the Eastern Screech Owl almost 20 times more coverage than I received on its species-specific page10.
You will no doubt say that there is less known about my species, and that's no doubt true, but such wild disparities in your article lengths make me think that you guys just aren't trying. There is, after all, so much more that could be said about Whiskered Screech Owls in particular than you have thus far seen fit to print.
To justify that latter assertion, I have appended some facts about my species that you have failed to include in your sparing entry for the Whiskered Screech Owl. I hope that you will add them to your article on Megascops trichopsis, not just to up the word count, but to encourage others to come forth with what they know about our apparently underappreciated species.
Until then, I remain your most obedient and humble servant, Whiskey Pete, the Whiskered Screech Owl, alias Megascops trichopsis.
Facts that Wikipedia does not provide in its entry on Whiskered Screech Owls (at least as of December 2024)
1) "Whiskered Screech-owls get their name from extended bristles on the ends of feathers bordering their facial disk." Hawk Watch International
2) "There are fewer than 500 Whiskered Screech Owls in the United States." American Bird Conservancy
3) "Partners in Flight estimates Whiskered Screech-Owls global population size at 200,000 breeding individuals." Cornell Lab: All About Birds
4) "The Whiskered Screech Owl is the Smallest of the three North American Screech Owls." Owl Research Institute
5) Although the Whiskered Screech Owl overlaps in range with the Western Screech-Owl, "it is generally found at higher elevations." Owling.com
You might also want to add some suggestions about how to tell us apart from the Western Screech Owl, whom we are said to resemble in no small degree. There are some subtle differences that you can try to go by. We Whiskered Screech Owls are said to have darker orange eyes, for instance, as well as a paler, yellowish bill and more emphatic streaking on our feathers11 . But the easiest way to tell us apart is to listen to our trademark calls.
We Whiskered Screech Owls produce (let's face it) a somewhat monotonous tooting. It is rhythmical and relentless and can sometimes sound like Morse Code12. The Western Screech Owls, on the other hand, hold forth with a kind of "bouncing ball" routine. That's the one in which they seem to be imitating the sound of a ping-pong ball coming to rest13.
1: Whiskered Screech Owl, Wikipedia
2: Long-eared Owl, Wikipedia
3: Whiskered Screech-Owl, Tucson Audubon Society
4: Whiskered Screech-Owl at a Glance, American Bird Conservancy
5: Whiskered Screech-Owl, Tucson Audubon Society
6: Burrowing owl nesting productivity: a comparison between artificial and natural burrows on and off golf courses, EurekaMag: Life, Earth & Medical Sciences
7: Whiskered Screech Owl, Wikipedia
8: Long-eared Owl, Wikipedia
9: Screech Owl, Wikipedia
10: Eastern Screech-Owl, Wikipedia
11: Megascops kennicottii Western Screech-owl, Hawk Watch International
12: Whiskered Screech-Owl, Audubon
13: Western Screech-Owl Similar Species Comparison, Cornell Lab eBird
copyright 2024 by Brian Quass.
contact: quass@quass.com.