>>The Wildlife Center of Virginia is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine.

Each year, the center provides state of the art, veterinary and rehabilitative care for nearly 3000 wild animals, with one goal in mind: returning the animal to its natural habitat.

(inspiring instrumental music) (bird hooting) >>I'm not sure what it is about the sounds of the nighttime forest, but they seem to have the ability to send a chill right up your spine.

Perhaps it's because we can't see what's out there in the darkness making those noises.

For nearly a million years since early humans first mastered fire.

The campfire, maybe a torch, eventually a candle or an oil lamp, were the only means they had to push back to darkness.

And for early man and early civilizations, the nighttime was a time of mystery, it was a time of magic, it was a time of superstition, it was a time of fear.

People couldn't see what was going on out there.

But they knew the darkness was alive.

Of course today, we can turn the nighttime into daylight, by simply the flip of a switch.

And we know what's going on out there in the nighttime forest.

And we now understand those nighttime predators, those animals moving around in the cover of darkness.

But you know, for me, that doesn't make them any less magical.

And that's especially true of the owls.

(gentle music) There are 19 species of owls living in North America, the largest of which is the huge great gray owl of the Northwoods.

It can stand 32 inches tall and have a six foot wingspan.

But he's actually just a ball of feathers.

He's a long way from being the heaviest of our owls.

That distinction goes to the snowy owl, the beautiful white owl that hunts the Arctic tundra.

Those white owls have become iconic and very well known through movies like Harry Potter.

But here in the lower 48, the most common of the large owls is the great horned owl.

And they are almost the same size as the snowy owl and certainly far more common in all parts of the United States.

And when you see one of these birds, it's easy to understand how primitive man would believe that there were flying devils in the dark forest night.

That had horns and eyes that glowed in the dark.

But the spectrum of owls in North America really extends from the largest all the way down to tiny little owls that are just a few inches tall.

Pygmy owls, burrowing owls or the saw-whet owls.

But don't sell the little guys short for their size.

They're as ferocious a predator as can be found in the nighttime sky.

(phone ringing) >>Wildlife Center of Virginia.

This is Caroline, how can I help you?

>>Where are you located.

ma'am?

>>Okay, great, that's not too far from us.

Are you able to bring the owl to us?

We're located in Waynesboro, and we don't charge for any wildlife we take in, we rely solely on donations.

>>No, don't give it any food or water.

Just keep it in a secure, ventilated container, with a sheet or a towel covering it, try to keep the trip as quiet as possible.

>>Most people know that birds of prey have very keen eyesight, and that helps them in finding their prey and hunting their food.

But it surprises a lot of people to know that for the owls, hearing is their primary sense that they use when looking for prey.

Their ears are actually not on the side of their head as ours are.

But they're more in front and they're offset.

So the difference in the sound entering their ears enables them to quite literally triangulate the distance to their prey.

The great gray owl of the Northwoods is known for its ability to listen for the sounds of small rodents moving beneath the surface of the snow.

Completely out of sight.

And the owl can simply drop in, stick in a long leg into the deep snow, and pull out lunch.

Incredible.

They've even done tests with barn owls, where they used an opaque contact lens to completely obscure their vision.

The owls were still able to catch mice very effectively.

But the owls eyes are very specialized.

Those people think that owls can see in the dark.

And that's not literally true, they need some light to be able to see, but their ability to collect and utilize the available light is hundred times better than humans.

In fact, an illustration that makes this point, if you can imagine yourself standing on the goal line of a football field at night.

Completely dark, the stadium lights are out, no lights from town, no artificial lighting, and you have one candle.

If you hold that candle close to the book you're reading, you can see well enough to make out the words and read the book.

If an owl could read, he also could read his book from a light of your candle.

But he could read it on the opposite goal line a hundred yards away.

An incredible ability to collect light.

Now, they get that ability because their eyes are so large in their head.

And they're so large, in fact, that they don't have the muscles around the eye, as most mammals do, that enable them to turn their eyes left or right without actually moving their heads.

And that's the ability that has enabled us as mammals to triangulate depth of field and distance to an object because our eyes move together.

And our brain does the calculation .

For owls, they move their head from side to side, or up and down.

You may have seen videos of owls making these bizarre movements, what they're doing is judging distance.

And that's an incredible ability.

Now, one of the downsides of the fact that they have no muscles around the eye in the eye socket is that when there's an injury to the head, all of that trauma goes directly into the eye.

Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, a hospital for wild animals, the most common injury we see in owls are birds that have been hit by cars.

And that almost always translates into damage to their eyes.

>>So when owls are hit by vehicles, one of the most common injuries we see is ocular trauma.

So any sort of traumatic injury to their eye, Owls have really, really, really big eyes, they can actually account for up to 3% of their body weight, which is huge.

So when they suffer any sort of trauma, the eyes are one of the structures that can be really quickly and easily affected.

So sometimes when owls have trauma to their eyes, we certainly can treat those injuries.

It just depends on what type of injury we're seeing.

So when they're hit by a vehicle or suffer any sort of trauma their head really, any structure of the eye can be damaged.

So the front part of the eye, the cornea can be damaged all the way to the back to the retina.

We can see things like retinal detachment, bleeding in the back of the eye, bleeding in the front of the eye, all the way to things like completely ruptured eyes.

And the treatment depends on what type of injury we're seeing.

So some eyes can be saved just with eyedrops and things like that using anti inflammatories, pain medications, topically in that area.

But sometimes eyes cannot be saved.

If the trauma is too severe, we end up taking out the eye, and we do a surgery called an evisceration.

What that surgery is, is we cut into the eye and remove the contents of the middle of the eye, leaving the structure and the bony parts of the eye behind to preserve the shape of the owl's face.

Because owls have such really, really, really big eyes, they are a really, really important part of the structure of their face.

So important that to maintain the shape of their face and maintain their hearing which they rely heavily on for hunting.

So we can just take out the middle part of the eye and leave the bony structures to preserve their hearing basically.

So another really common injury we see in owls that are hit by vehicles is any sort of broken bone.

As you can imagine, if an owl's hunting beside a road or something like that, and a car hits him, that's a lot of trauma for a really small little body.

That can break pretty much any bone in the body.

And depending on which bone is broken, we can fix that.

So there's different ways of fixing broken bones.

We can do external bandages, so like you would get a cast sort of in a human, but just a bandage on that bird to keep that wing still while we wait for that bone to heal.

And there's other fractures that do better with surgical repair.

So taking the animal to surgery, putting pins in, putting different wires in, and actually physically repairing those with hardware, so to speak, and then giving that animal time for that bone to recover and heal back together.

So another common reason that owls present to the Wildlife Center are for being caught in some sort of netting.

You can think of garden netting, or sports netting like a soccer net.

Sometimes they can get their wings, and feathers, and feet caught up in those things when they're hunting.

And the problem with that is it can cause constriction injuries, so it wraps tightly around the affected limb, the affected feathers, and we can see damaged feathers as well as swollen limbs and damaged tissue from that abrasion, basically.

Another reason we might admit an owl to the Wildlife Center is for lead intoxication.

This isn't as common in owls as you would see in other scavenger species like vultures and eagles.

However, sometimes an owl might, you know, take advantage of some easy prey and get lead intoxication.

So that is another reason an owl could be admitted to our Wildlife Center.

And that is something we could treat that owl for.

(gentle music) (phone ringing) >>Wildlife Center Virginia, this is Caroline, how can I help you?

>>What kind of fence is it?

>>Yeah, please bring him in.

Rather than trying to free the owl from the fence, can you cut the barbed wire far away from where it's attached to the animal and bring the bird with the wire that's tangled around it in, so our vets can remove it?

>>Great, be careful.

And be sure to protect yourself from injury.

Wear thick gloves, eye protection, and maintain control of the owl's feet while you work.

contain the bird in a box, and bring it to us.

>>Great, see you soon, bye bye.

(calm instrumental music) >>So after an owl recovers from its injuries, it can't just be released.

It has to be flight conditioned in order to build up any stamina that it might have lost while it was recovering from its injuries.

So depending on the extent of the injuries, this can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month.

And with owls, it's really important that they have silent flight, because they use an ambush strategy to hunt their prey.

So owls have some really cool adaptations in their feathers that allow them to be silent.

However, if these feathers become damaged, then that means that they're no longer silent.

And we can't release an owl that's not silent because it needs to be able to ambush its prey.

So there are a couple of options that we have for owls that have damaged their feathers, either as a result of their injury or the result of being in captivity.

So our two options are that we can wait for an owl to molt or basically lose its feathers and regrow new ones.

But that can take up to several years depending on the specie of owl.

So one option that we have is feather implanting or imping, where we insert feathers from a donor bird, which is generally a bird that has either been euthanized or died.

But we've been able to give it a second purpose by harvesting its feathers and giving it to a patient that is going to be releasable.

So in that process, we harvest the feathers and then insert them into the hollow shaft of the patient and use an adhesive, generally an epoxy, so that the feathers will stay in until the bird naturally molds during its next cycle.

The Center does admit healthy, uninjured owls that have either fallen from their nests or their parents have died.

And in this case, what we generally try to do is get them back out into the wild to be raised by wild parents.

However, that's not always an option.

So a second option that we have is to have them be raised by a surrogate.

We have a couple of surrogates here and one of them is Papa G'Ho, which is a male great horned owl who is non-releasable due to a number of injuries.

But he has maintained his wild attitude and has successfully raised over 40 young great horned owlets for us since he came here in 2001.

So some things that Papa G'Ho teaches our young great horned owls are how to have natural great horned owl behaviors.

So to be appropriately fearful of humans, and also how to hunt.

So with young owls, it's really important to expose them to live prey because they've never hunted before.

And they're going to have to hunt for themselves once they go out into the wild.

So we put them through a process that we call Mouse School, which is also known as live prey testing, where we give them either live mice or live rats so that they can learn how to hunt so they can successfully hunt once they're returned to the wild.

This is equally important for adults owls that are recovering from injuries to make sure that they can successfully hunt even after they've become injured.

But it's very important for the young owls just because we want to give them exposure to that situation before they go out into the wild.

So here at the center, we try to follow natural history as much as possible and time releases to occur when the babies would naturally be dispersing from their parents.

So with owlets that depends on their specie.

But for great horned outlets, we generally release them in October because in Virginia, that's when they would be independent of their parents.

So we generally have great horned owlets in our care or under Papa's care from March to April when they generally come in, until October.

So they have a very long rehabilitation process.

(gentle guitar music) >>As of 2019 there are approximately 25 education ambassadors that are year round residents at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

Of those 25, five are owls.

Some of them, like Quinn the great horned owl, help us to teach the world about wildlife and about the environment in ways that are pretty special in ways that we can only achieve with these live education animals.

Like most of the education ambassadors, Quinn's first visit to the Wildlife Center was actually as a patient.

He was rescued in 2008 after he was found entangled and trapped in a barbed wire fence in the Roanoke, Virginia area.

And when he was tangled and trapped, struggling and thrashing, trying to get free, he suffered his most obvious injury to his right eye.

So after he was rescued and transported to the Wildlife Center, our veterinarians very quickly determined that that eye would never heal on its own or with medical intervention.

Astonishingly, and amazingly, sometimes a one eyed owl does have the potential to be fully rehabilitated and successfully released.

But a few other conditions have to be met for those one eyed owls to be released to the wild.

And one of the most important is that they must be able to fly very quietly, if not completely silently.

Owls are really fascinating birds of prey and they're very different compared to raptors that are the most active during the daytime.

So those birds such as eagles, and hawks, and falcons, are very fast flyers.

Their bodies are very streamlined and very aerodynamic.

Even their wings come to very fine tips on the edges.

An owl is virtually the complete opposite.

They're slow flyers, their wings are much shorter and much more rounded on the edges.

So although that makes them comparatively slow, they have the ability thanks to small structures on the leading and tailing edges of all their flight feathers that look almost like the the teeth of a comb, or maybe even the bristles of a toothbrush.

These small structures help to break up air currents as an owl would be flying through them, creating very little turbulence compared to other birds of prey.

So while an owl is not a fast flyer, they create little turbulence which means they create almost no noise.

So for a one Eyed Owl to be released back into the wild again, one of the most important components of that owl's rehabilitation is silent flight.

Quinn, unfortunately, when he was treated as a patient, or rather when he was trapped in that barbed wire fence, not only did he injure his eye, but he suffered some pretty deep cuts on his back and wings, which left heavy scars that are still there today.

So now every year when Quinn molts, that's when he drops his feathers one by one, and grows brand new feathers one by one every springtime.

When his new feathers grow in, because of those scars, they tend to stick out at odd or irregular angles.

And you can even see an example of that on his back there.

So that odd angle makes Quinn a loud, noisy flyer.

One of the most important messages that we communicate with our education programs is the importance of keeping the environment litter free.

And the way we communicate that, especially with younger audiences is the message of the apple core.

Because we have hundreds of animals that are admitted as patients each year that have been hit an injured by vehicles, we do everything that we can to instill the values of keeping environment clean, and the message of the apple core is a great way for audience members to remember that.

So I can boil the message of the apple core down to just a handful of words.

No litter is safe litter.

Unfortunately, many people are under the impression that biodegradable litter such as a banana peel or an apple core or any other food waste is not harmful for wildlife, right?

It's not as obviously dangerous as say broken glass or toxic chemicals.

But the fact is, it is incredibly dangerous for wildlife.

Oftentimes, animals, particularly scavengers, are attracted to that roadside litter, in turn attracting their predators.

So one way that Quinn helps us to teach the world about wildlife in the environment, is to help us translate those ideals into bite sized chunks, if you will.

>>While most species of owls are holding their own across North America in terms of population anyway, there are certain exceptions to that.

The spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest still teeters at the brink of extinction.

Because of the loss of the old growth forests of that region, its very specialized habitat.

Across the rest of the United States, the barn owl is also experiencing some trouble.

And that's for two reasons.

One is a lot of the older forests that have hollow trees, which are nesting cavities for birds like barn owls, have been cut down, cleared, or destroyed.

So you can help with that by considering putting up an owl box.

If you have a barn, or a tractor shed, or an outbuilding, or garage or even a tall eve on your house, you can construct an owl box, put it up there, and provide an opportunity barn owl to move in.

Plans for these boxes are readily available online, and you can get them in any local library.

But the other thing that's causing problems for barn owls and many other species of predators is the overuse of insecticides.

And in the case of the owls, particularly rodenticides.

Rat poisons, mouse baits, and the like.

If you have a problem with pests, like rats or mice, don't initially go to the poison, because that has unintended consequences.

The overuse of these chemicals is causing severe problems in owl populations and the populations of many other raptors.

So avoid using rat poisons and mouse baits, if at all possible.

One of the other things that you can truly avoid doing that will have a very positive impact not just for owls, but for all wildlife, is to avoid littering.

When you're driving down the road, perhaps eating an apple, and you're down to the core.

And you don't wanna just throw it in the floor.

So you roll down the window, throw it out onto the side of the road, so some animal can come along and eat it.

Well, what you don't stop to think about is that little bit of human food waste can literally pull the entire food chain right to the edge of the pavement.

Now, owls don't eat apple cores, but they do eat mice.

And the mice are drawn to that food waste an owl sitting in a tree along the mowed shoulder of a road has a perfect hunting ground.

He waits for that rodent dark into the pavement will swoop down behind to grab him.

But unfortunately, owls don't look both ways.

And they're often hit by cars.

And that's one of the most common injuries we see.

Completely avoidable if people would just stop littering.

Now, if you do happen to see an owl sitting beside the road, looking a little bewildered and he doesn't fly away when you drive by, you can be sure that's abnormal behavior, and that owl has almost certainly either been hit by a car or blown down into the road by the draft of the automobile and the wind is the car goes by.

If you can get him and take him to help that could save his life.

But be careful because owls have very sharp talons and very sharp beaks.

If you don't know what you're doing, you really need to call someone who does.

But if you're willing to try putting a coat, a towel, a blanket completely over the bird and gently picking it up inside that bundle of cloth, calling a wildlife rehabilitator, your local wildlife agency, or animal control officer, can get that bird to help in time to save its life, and you will have done a good deed.

Now, one of the things that has happened in our society in recent years with the popularity of Harry Potter films is a lot of people saw Harry Potter's pet owl and decided they wanted to have one too.

Well, let me tell you, owls don't make good pets.

And it's against the law to keep them in captivity.

So if that idea has crossed your mind, don't do it.

And the last thing I really want to encourage you to do is to get outside and enjoy the darkness and enjoy the wildlife of the night.

Learn about the owls in your area, contact the local bird club because one of the popular activities that many birding organizations do, it's what they call an owl prowl, where they will use the recorded sounds of an owl to call in their wild neighbors.

Owls are very territorial and when they hear the sound of an interloper, they'll come in and check it out.

And you may get a first hand glimpse of some of the most beautiful creatures in the nighttime sky, and you will be glad you did.

(dramatic music) (singer vocalizing)