Festival Celebrates Owl Hall of Fame

Fans of owls have just wrapped up a weekend of bird-related activities by inducting six people and an owl into the World Owl Hall of Fame.

Held every year since 2006, the International Festival of Owls began as a way to celebrate the "hatch-day" of Alice, a great horned owl that lives at the Houston Nature Center in Houston, Minnesota. Since then, the event has expanded into a weekend-long festival that features everything from live owl programs and owl nest box building classes to owl-themed food (including owl-face pancakes) and a chance to dissect owl pellets.

Owls cough up pellets of indigestible food once or twice a day. By "dissecting" these pellets. people can find bits of fur, feathers or bones that indicate what the owl has eaten.

One of the highlights of the festival is the presentation of awards for the World Owl Hall of Fame. This year's owl inductee was Mozart, a 34-year-old Eurasian eagle owl.

Mozart, a resident of the National Birds of Prey Center in the U.K., received the 2008 Lady Gray'l Award for his public service, which includes patiently allowing blind people to "see" an owl by touching him. Mozart has also starred in a video and several films, and helped researchers find a successful treatment for a yeast infection that can affect owls' eyes.

Raised by humans, Mozart is highly sociable.

"My students were always quite pleased when he favored them with an offer of a dead rat," said Melissa Hughes, a researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where Mozart stayed briefly.

This year's top human honors went C. Stuart Houston, who received the "Champion of Owls" award for his many years of work in ornithology. Houston, who was also this year's festival keynote speaker, has banded 10,000-plus owls since 1943 and written 51 research papers on the subject of owls.

"He always involved other people in his work, from farm lads to grown people," said Dr. Robert Nero, a past "Champion of Owls" award winner.

For the first time, this year's Owl Hall of Fame presentations also honored several other people with special achievement awards. They included Richard Clark of the U.S., who helped compile the "Working Bibliography of Owls of the World"; Johan de Jong of The Netherlands, who leads the Dutch Barn Owl Working Group; Paul Muriithi Kibuthu of Kenya, who works to help Kenyans overcome their aversion to owls and guides tourists on owl-observing tours; Deane Lewis of Australia, who created The Owl Pages; and Jemima Parry-Jones of the U.K., who developed a system for training and caring for captive owls.

Owls are birds of prey that typically hunt at night, searching for insects, other birds or small mammals. They have been the subject of folklore and mythology in many cultures, including Kenya, where some people believe an owl sighting or hoot means someone is going to die; India, where white owls are associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, love and beauty; and ancient Greece, where owls were a symbol of wisdom.