Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Mistletoe in Georgia's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

This New Year’s Eve, as you’re snuggling up to a loved one beneath a sprig of mistletoe, spare a moment to consider the festive plant’s role in the wild.

Many Kinds of Mistletoe

The mistletoe we usually see used in holiday decorations is native to and grows mostly in Great Britain and some other European countries. Several species of mistletoe also grow here in North America, including the dwarf mistletoe which happens to be the preferred place for northern spotted owl to roost and nest.

Northern spotted owls prefer to nest in clumps of dwarf mistletoe

Mistletoe grows attached to the branches of trees and shrubs, drawing nutrients directly from its hosts. Mistletoe is often considered merely a pest that may harm its unfortunate hosts. But in 2001, an associate professor at Charles Sturt University, David Watson, published a paper demonstrating that mistletoe is actually good for biodiversity. It turns out that mistletoe provides food and shelter for a wide array of wildlife, and therefore, areas with greater amounts of mistletoe can sustain a higher diversity of birds and other animals.

So while a mistletoe decoration can bring two people together in a kiss, in the wild it helps to bring nesting birds, grazing antelope and deer, and many other animals together. Now that’s one hospitable plant!

Walking through a Jefferson County ranch one summer day, I inadvertently flushed a great horned owl. Before I could clear out so she could return to her roost, two ravens and a golden eagle swooped in from above. The eagle didn’t think much of the owl’s attempt to look large and took her to the ground.

Golden eagle.

I wouldn’t normally intervene, but feeling guilt about flushing the owl in daylight, I ran over to break up the fight. Wings flapped furiously above prairie grasses. The mobbing ravens flew off on my arrival, but the eagle couldn’t get airborne with the owl and didn’t seem willing to give her up even after my two friends showed up. After a couple vain attempts to fly, Eagle stopped trying. From then on both birds—Eagle face down, wings spread, Owl face up under and behind Eagle—appeared resigned to their fate and moved only their eyes.

We could not believe Eagle was so unafraid of us shouting and jumping that it wouldn’t let Owl go, but after much puzzling and probing we realized Eagle’s finger-sized talons were empty. Owl wouldn’t let Eagle go! Or perhaps she couldn’t, for her talons were all sunk deep in Eagle’s upper thighs.

It’s hard not to anthropomorphize in a situation like this. It was easy to see how owls gained their reputation for wisdom, as Owl’s eyes calmly followed our every movement. Eagle, on the other hand, looked straight forward with an intensity that I could only translate as a constant stream of unprintable words. F*@#! F*@#! Stuck! F*@#! The intensity never let up; maybe that’s just how eagle eyes look. All three humans got the distinct impression that Owl and Eagle were indifferent to our meddling, as if we were irrelevant spectators to an age-old war.

Owl had two clean puncture wounds in her chest, at least two we could see. She eventually began to gasp for air, tilted back to get more, drooped her eyelids, and expired. Posthumously, her talons only seemed to tighten their death grip. I’m sure Eagle would have starved to death or suffered Prometheus’s revenge at the beaks of the ravens if we didn’t pry Owl’s talons out of Eagle’s thighs.

Great horned owl.

Eagle looked fine and mighty again flying off despite serious wounds, including perhaps to his pride, having been fought to a draw by an owl at most a third his size.

Owl had chicks in her nest. Perhaps her death grip was to save them from Eagle. The male owl should have continued to feed and raise them, but after days without a sign of his attendance, the Montana Raptor Conservation Center collected the owl chicks for release to another nest.

The owl and the eagle help me explain to myself, if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else, why I hunt, why I walk the land, why I am committed to conservation. However you get to an appreciation for conservation, I hope you will appreciate one more perspective on a complicated world.

This story originally appeared in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of Outside Bozeman.

This Halloween, keep a wary eye out for things that go bump—and prowl, growl, hoot and howl—in the night. Many of the world’s most impressive predators wait for the cover of darkness before setting out to make their living. Here’s a gallery of some of nature’s most successful nighttime hunters.

Leopards prowl the night in Africa, Asia and India, bringing down deer, gazelles, monkeys and even birds. They’ll often drag their kills into the same trees where they lounge during the heat of the day, keeping themselves and their next meals safe from other predators.

Most owls, such as the northern spotted owl and Mexican spotted owl, wait for nightfall to swoop on silent wings in search of hapless squirrels, rabbits, wood rats and other small mammals. However, the snowy owl and burrowing owl do most of their hunting during the day!

The Florida panther is mostly active between dusk and dawn, when it searches through Florida’s swamps and forests for deer, rabbits, raccoons and feral hogs.

The panthers will sometimes take small pets or livestock too; that’s why Defenders works with local landowners to help them construct panther-proof fences and pens to help keep domestic animals safe from these native cats. Learn more about living with panthers on the Defenders website.

One of the smallest predators Defenders works on, the black-footed ferret, depends entirely upon prairie dog colonies for both food and shelter. At night, while the prairie dogs sleep snugly in their dens, the ferret prowls through the colony’s tunnels in search of their next meal.

The wolverine is primarily nocturnal, but can also be active during the daytime. This strong, aggressive animal may lope for dozens of miles as it hunts for ground squirrels and snowshoe hares, though it will also frequently scavange from the carcasses of larger animals killed by wolves or bears.

Red wolves wait until dark to hunt in North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Not much larger than coyotes, red wolves search for rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and other small prey, but will sometimes take down deer as well.

Gray wolves are crepuscular, meaning they do most of their hunting at dawn and again at dusk. But they’re also opportunists; they’ll take advantage of a good hunting opportunity any time of day or night.

Mythbuster: Contrary to popular belief, wolves don’t howl at the moon! But they do howl more often on brightly lit nights. This year, Halloween falls a full week after the full moon—will the night be bright enough to prompt some howling? If you live in wolf country, take a listen, and let us know!

Adopt the Ultimate Creature of the Night!

Adopt a Bat Today!

Bats play an incredibly important role in the ecosystem, eating billions of crop-destroying insects like moths and beetles, as well as mosquitoes. But in just four years, more than a million bats have been killed by the mysterious disease known as white nose syndrome.

Your bat adoption will show everyone that bats are nothing to fear and help Defenders continue to work to protect these amazing creatures and the places they live.

Visit our Wildlife Adoption & Gift Center to adopt any of our other imperiled creatures of the night—and day!