Uggla the Great Horned Owl

Someone I know (at least a little bit) passed away this week, Uggla the Great Horned Owl. Uggla was an Ambassador Owl residing at The Raptor Trust. I got the following in my Facebook feed this morning.

It is with heavy heart that I bring sad news to you today: one of our very dearest ambassador birds, Uggla, the Great Horned Owl, has passed on.

Uggla was an almost unimaginable 40 years old. In the research I have done, I believe he may have been the second-oldest Great Horned Owl that ever lived, and he lived almost every day of those 40 years right here at 1390 White Bridge Rd, Millington, NJ.

In the early spring of 1980, I was a freshman in high-school. The backyard wildlife rehab facility that my parents ran on our property had not yet become The Raptor Trust. It was still The New Jersey Raptor Association at that point: not yet incorporated and without the 501(c)3 nonprofit status that would follow. A “fledgling” organization, one might say. But Len and Diane knew their birds. Even though The Raptor Trust wasn’t hatched until a few years later, they had been caring for wild birds – often in the laundry room or bathroom of the house – since the mid-1960’s.

It was in that setting that someone dropped off a young floof of an owl. Just a few weeks old, the owl had been found by some well-intentioned local folks who attempted to raise it on their own. There are few things cuter than a baby owl, I’ll give you that. But raising a wild baby owl is not easy to do. It is also against state and federal law. The owl wasn’t being fed a proper diet, did not have proper housing and it wasn’t thriving.

Worse, even though it had been with the folks who found it for only a few weeks, it was already completely imprinted and dependent on humans, having been hand-fed and socialized to people. This youngster, still fluffy, had already lost his chance to survive in the wild. Since he was so young, and already so accustomed to people, Len and Diane made the decision to keep him as an education and ambassador bird.

My grandparents and my 95-year-old great-grandmother joined us for dinner one night that spring, shortly after the owl’s arrival. Great-grandma Alma Gustavson, a first-generation immigrant from Sweden, saw the bird and proclaimed, “Uggla!” She explained: “Uggla” means “owl” in Swedish. And so, his journey as “Uggla” began.

For 40 years Uggla delighted visitors here. He was talkative. Children would inevitably “hoot” at him – he was an owl after all – and he would often return the favor.

He was inquisitive. Having been imprinted, he had no fear of humans and would often sit out during the day, right up at the front of his enclosure, engaging passers-by with his big, yellow eyes and that kind of funny way he always tilted his head to one side. He really seemed to enjoy it.

He was photogenic. He has graced many of our gift shop cards, mugs and other items, including a holiday card we sent out last month.

Not long ago, some of my young second cousins came to visit – little guys two generations further down the family tree than me. While passing by Uggla’s enclosure, it occurred to me that SIX generations of my family knew this one amazing bird. That’s hard to wrap my head around, but there it is. SIX.

Later in his life, Uggla’s voice changed and began to make this kind of scratchy, crackly-sounding call. Len used to say that he had “lost his hooter.” He was still as talkative as ever; he just sounded like a grumpy, little old man mumbling under his breath. In owl-culture, perhaps that’s exactly what he was.

There would be no way to even begin to count the number of people this one wonderful bird met, delighted, hooted at, taught. Tens of thousands for sure. Possibly hundreds of thousands.

While it would have been better in every way for him to have lived a natural life in the wild, he did live an amazing and meaningful life as an ambassador for his species and for all wildlife. Godspeed, old man.

Chris Soucy, Director, The Raptor Trust

If you have your own story about this wonderful owl, please do share. We know that many of you loved Uggla just as much as we did.

Uggla the Great Horned Owl