Presence of Barred Owls in the Boars Hog Gap Area Travis Harvey Tennessee Tech University April 27, 2004 Introduction: The Barred Owl is a generalist species which prefer pole sized timber and is a common species in this part of the country, especially in areas that are being harvested for lumber (Mazur, Frith, and James, 1998). This species has also been found to invade on the range of other species and is a good species to gain and understanding of how their population works (Peterson and Robins, 2003). In determining the sex of Barred owls several studies have been done and it has been found that you cannot tell the difference when it comes to feather patterns (Carpenter, 1992). In doing owls calls I will be unable to tell if the owl is male or female. My hypothesis is that there is a population of Barred Owls at the Boar's Hog gap area near the Bowater Pocket Wilderness. To prove my hypothesis I needed to go to this area and call the owls to determine if there was indeed a population of these owls. The first step in doing this was determining good areas to call them. In doing this I needed to find the best way to call them and found that using an owl call and taped owl calls was the best way to do this. With this experiment I was able to determine if there were Barred Owls in this region and gain a better understanding of how they live. The Boar’s Hog Gap area is in a popular hiking spot, which attracts hundreds of tourists every year and is isolated enough, allowing for natural conditions for the owls to live. This also contributed to the reason that I choose the area because of the conditions and ease of getting to the area. Methods/Materials: Materials used were a reed type owl call in order to convince the owls into thinking that there was an owl calling to them. When this method would not work I would use a tape with owls calling on it, which gave a more precise sound allowing these owls to be more easily convinced into calling back to me and has been found to be the most used in the past to call Barred owls (Mazur, Frith, and James, 1998). Other materials used was a data form to record when, where, and what was heard. Also used, was hiking equipment enabling the trips to the sample areas. Each of these areas was at least 1 1/2 miles from the other sample areas. Methods used, I went to three sample areas in which I was able to gather this data without calling the same owls each time. The sampling time was also important because of the hunting times of these owls. In order to sample these owls at the best time I went out during the early evening. When doing the sampling, I would find a place in which I was able to call them and they were able to hear without any obstructions. These areas composed of mainly overlooks with one sampling area that was an open part in the woods. When it started to get dark I would first start calling the owls with the reed call, in which I would do a couple calls and listen to see if I could hear an owl. If I determined that the call was not working I would use a radio which had a tape of Barred owls calling on it. Using these tapes I would play the call, stop it and see if an owl would call. When an owl was heard the information was put on the data sheet so that it was recorded and interpreted Results and Discussion: Out of 3 sample sites I only heard one owl respond back to me. The call that was used that got the best callback was the taped owl call. The time of day that the owl responded was early evening, a little bit after the moon rose. Also the skies were clear and temperature was mild. This response still holds with my hypothesis that there is a population of Barred Owls in this area. These results also showed that using taped playback calls is a better way to call in an owl than using a reed call. The reason that maybe I could not get any other responses to my calling was the conditions. During the other sampling times the condition were slightly overcast without a good moon. Due to the dark conditions I was not able to get a good picture of the owl that was hooting back at me, so the only way to correctly identify the owl was due to it's distinctive call.