There was an owl hooting outside our house earlier, and it occurred to me that every other bird has a high-pitched call.
Ravens have a croak that could be considered low, but their loud call is a caw that’s higher. I can’t think of another bird with a call nearly as low as owls’.
Search engines are no help, mostly duplicates answering why they hoot. Why are owls’ calls so much lower than other birds?
This is a lot of information to absorb; thank you for all the work in writing up a great summary!
I thought size wasn’t a factor, considering eagles’ high-pitched calls, and most interesting to me was the first quote:
This is blindingly obvious… in retrospect. When I read it, I thought of musical instruments - a piccolo vs an oboe - but it was really interesting.
I thank you for bringing it up, I hadn’t thought to read much about it before!
I still have some things bookmarked to read about it, but what I found to share with you was really interesting!