From Hogwarts owls to the Emerald Coast seagulls

DESTIN, FL - Training seagulls for an Emerald Coast tourism commercial is a lot different from working with the owls in the Harry Potter films, animal trainer Dave Sousa says.

"Seagulls are opportunists," Sousa said. "They basically hang at the beach looking for handouts or fish for food; owls are predators. A seagull will take something from you and eat; an owl will fly down, kill, grab it in their beak, go back to a perch and swallow it whole."

The biggest problem working with the owls - which carry messages to students at Hogwarts, the school of wizardry, in the Harry Potter films and books - is that they want to eat what they're supposed to carry, Sousa says: "They're very good, but we were changing what they did in the wild."

For the commercial, part of a new ad series filmed on Emerald Coast beaches from the Okaloosa County Tourist Development Council, a woman walks happily along the beach, confronts a pair of talking seagulls and realizes she's fantasizing to get away from her kids' demands.

Sousa, who does animal shows at Universal Studios Orlando in between movie work, traces his career path back to his fondness for pets in his childhood - from dogs to snakes.

"When I became old enough I started working in zoos and stuff like that, but I was more interested in the training than in the zookeeping," Sousa said. "I basically just grew from there."

"Growing" meant doing presentations at Washington Park Zoo, working in wild-animal rehabilitation in Oregon, and then working for Birds and Animals Unlimited, which provides animal trainers for movie and television productions.

"Because of my abilities, they put me out on different films," said Sousa, whose filmography includes "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" "Snow Dogs" and the 1998 "Doctor Dolittle" in addition to the Harry Potter films.

The keys to being a good animal trainer, Sousa said, are "patience and persistence. You've got to remember that animals only learn by making mistakes. The human psyche thinks if you're making mistakes, you're doing something wrong; an animal has to get something wrong 500 times before he does it right the first time.

"I'm not a great animal trainer, but I work harder at it than anybody else I know."

The challenge working with any sort of bird, Sousa said, is that "they can leave any time they want. Dogs can run away but you can always catch them; when a bird flies away, it only comes back if it wants to. You have to know your animals and do the best you can with them and hopefully they'll have that trust in you."