Got an ear for hooters? I’m talking creatures of the night. The kind you don’t hear coming because of their stealth feathers. And, the next thing you know, your rabbit, mouse or Pekingese body is tightly clenched in razor sharp talons and death is but a few wing beats away.

Owls are the creatures that scare the willies out of you while you’re lost in the woods or desert mountains at night. And then there’s that cemetery experience, the one with the spine-tingling call of the ghost owl, death owl, or hobgoblin owl, which, most of you would know by its more bland name of barn owl.

To me, owls are fascinating critters, but, if you’ve read Farley Mowatt, you don’t want to hear one call your name.

When I was a kid, on hikes throughout the country, my dad would always point out owl droppings at the base of trees, teaching me where to find owls. So, naturally, today, the excitement of finding owl droppings or digested critters at the base of a pine is both disgusting to whomever I’m hiking with at the time, but for me, a sense of nostalgic wonder.

Finding owl feathers was always an added bonus. Something to treasure, or show off in a cowboy hat, or Native American dream catcher dangling below the rearview mirror.

So, imagine my surprise a few years ago when Maine Audubon launched its first-in-the-nation owl monitoring study. The geek in me instantly wanted to become a citizen scientist and sign on, while the John Denver part of me just wanted to commune with owls.

So, naturally, I dragged my wife into it. Although, at first, she was just as excited as I was, because, she, too, loves owls. Except, she collects the artistic trinkets of owl-ware, whereas I’m into bones, feathers and dung.

We both joined several gung ho owl enthusiasts at the study’s meeting for volunteers on a Saturday at Maine Audubon’s Falmouth base. There, we got our wings, so to speak: a cassette tape of great-horned owl, northern saw-whet owl, and barred owl calls; assigned road routes, survey data sheets, and additional written training material.

We were cautioned, that because this was a first, we might not hear or see any owls. The survey was intended to determine what times owls were active in Maine during winter – their breeding period – and population ranges. Much like they’re doing this year with the Maine Owl Monitoring Project. Only, instead of a cassette tape, you guys and gals get CDs, which are harder to accidentally tape over with frozen fingers and a mini Maglite flashlight on that first pitch-black night out on a route.

Additionally, volunteers will be listening for nine species from 1 to 5 a.m. If I remember right, my wife and I were out and about between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and, later in the winter, from midnight to 4 a.m., during some of the coldest temperatures, gusting winds and even sudden snowstorms.

We didn’t see one single owl, which, between that and the cold, were factors that quickly curtailed my wife’s interest. We did hear a great-horned owl and barred owl respond to the taped calls along North Road in Bethel, and, I think, a far-off saw whet, the call of which sounds like a truck backing up.

Nowadays, they’ve got Web cams with which to spy on raptors. But, back in the day, in an Arizona desert, my dad and I used to monitor great-horned owls nesting in giant saguaro cacti. We didn’t have Web cams. We had cameras, hard hats, leather jackets, an extension ladder and a friend with a pickup truck.

The ladder was stood up in the bed of the truck, which was parked at the base of a saguaro. Being mindful of cactus spines and not falling off the ladder when climbing up to the towering nest while angry momma owl dive-bombed your head and shoulders, eyeballing the cute, fluffy, hissing chicks and assorted freshly-killed small mammals and lizards littering the large wooden nests was a hoot.