7:31 a.m. 27 degrees, wind NW 9 mph. The sun rose at 7:22 a.m., a minute earlier than yesterday. Did I notice? No. Sky: horizon to horizon gray ceiling, flat lighting. Last night, a light dusting of snow, very light. Permanent streams: tediously repetitive, visually and audibly, on ad infinitum like a singing vireo (whose voice I now miss). Wetlands: dull lighting. Peripheral activity, mostly busy chickadees and a white-breasted nuthatch. Pond: feeder stream melts through the surface (again), a black tail on a white dog. The heat of flowing water enough to melt snow, an oval gray patch, more slush than ice at the delta. Old deer tracks in the slush convert to pockmarks hemmed by snow; elsewhere, tracks widening and sinking, progressively less distinctive.
Pileated laughs, a rollicking cackle, from deep within the maples, first pileated outpouring in more than a month. High above opposite ends of the marsh, four crows and a raven . . . three caws and a croak. Male hairy woodpecker on the spindly top-most branch of ash, light-hearted pecks, barely a whisper. Backs down the swaying branch, tail pressed to wood. Seven doves bolt from the front lawn, a noisy, nervous flight . . . chickadees notice but stay put. Seven evening grosbeaks, all males, crowd the feeders.
Yesterday, in the gloaming, walking the dogs at five o'clock. A series of deep, deep, muffled hoots north of the marsh, from the saddle in Robinson Hill. Hoo, hooohoo, hoo, hoo. Great horned owl. Although I grew up with horned owls on Long Island and have seen them from Alaska to the Everglades, including the suburbs of Los Angeles, and nesting in the Roosevelt elk pavilion at the Bronx Zoo (1972) and the Hanover Sewage Treatment Plant (1978 and 79) and in caliche canyons of West Texas, this was my first homeground great horned owl. The owl pulled me. I followed, hopelessly and helplessly afflicted by a wild, unscratchable itch.
Great horned owls nest the Western Hemisphere's length, from the Aleutian Islands to Tierra del Feugo. Fifteen subspecies, all varying shades of mottled brown. From Arctic pale to jungle dark. Describing morphs is like ordering steak: pale, pale-medium, medium, medium-dark, dark, very dark. A massive bird: big and bold. A softball-sized head, sinister and expressive face punctuated by huge yellow eyes. Feathers for horns. Eats anything it wants, from mice to great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, ospreys, porcupines, timber rattlesnakes (a major predator), and fox kits, and feral cats. Loves hares and rabbits. Once, I found a mink’s tail, a woodcock’s bill, and a sucker’s dorsal fin in a Dutchess County, New York nest.
Dogs and I strolled into the saddle and listened, patiently, quietly. More deep hoots. Then, a single, odd barking note, also deep. Solemn hoots, tuba hoots. We were close. A bleak night became vastly more interesting. Eventually, I called back, hoping to provoke a dialogue. Only the beech leaves answered.
This post is truly poetic.
Wow, a GH Owl! Here on our 100 acres I hear only Barred (calling regularly now, in the evening) even though I know there are the GHs...three years ago took a nestling to a rehab, later released, saw one parent and a sibling that year often but no sign of them since. They left the leavings of many meals at the foot of a skeletal white pine - largely ducks, from one of our three ponds. Only ever heard and seen Barred in Thetford.