The Year of The OWL

Many things happen during a twelve-month period in Nature. 

Though similar, they are never the same. Each year becomes "The Year Of ..."

The past one was definitely "The Year of The Owl".

(I dedicate this entry to my owl-loving niece Francesca, 

true environmentalist and a tireless advocate of Nature)

Northern Hawk Owl, Surnia ulula
from Bird Feeder - part III

June:
My friends and I decided to explore and photograph a wonderful part of the Washington State, USA, called The Palouse. We commenced our trip by visiting an old cemetery by a small town of  Spangle, The cemetery, quite detached and seemingly forgotten by the town below, sits, like an open history book, on the top of the largest hill. Only the old tombstones and a handful of mature trees obstruct a full 360 degree view of the sea of green, gently rolling country below.

Spalding, Old Cemetery, WA, USA

The center of the cemetery is crowned by an old spruce which must have been planted by some of the early settlers almost a century and a half ago. Thinking of what life must have been back then I somehow felt drawn to that central point, the tree that remembered the times gone by. Almost past it,  I noticed that, in one place, its otherwise evenly placed bark bulged in an untidy way.  The irregularity made me look up.

A pair of beautiful yellow,  motionless eyes stared at me betraying the perfect camouflage of a large bird.

The colors and patterns of its plumage made it almost invisible as it sat close to the trunk pretending to be just another bit growth. Even the topmost feathers, the "horns" helped it to blend in, as they followed the deep creases in the bark.

For the entire duration of our visit a Great Horned Owl, Bubo virginianus, has been patiently observing our every step. 

When all four of us gathered underneath the tree it allowed us to take a couple of photos and then took off to seek a more peaceful perch in younger trees by the edge of the cemetery.

Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis                       

It was the last place where we would have expected to find an owl but more we thought about it, the greater sense it made.

A quiet cemetery with old trees (so scarce otherwise) and fertile fields all around must have been a good venue for the largest of all North American owls.
There must be many rodents scurrying all over the  place, enough for bird  to make a decent living.

A silent, ncturnal hunter, it would go after other prey too,snakes, frogs, rabbits, hares, raccoons, even a baby deer.

And, as the only avian species, it also regularly preys on skunks.
Swooping down on wings with flight feathers equipped with special comb-like structures that reduce the sound to nothing, and equipped with sharp  talons that can squeeze with amazing force, it gives its prey only a minuscule chance to react.

October: 
I was hiking the woods near Chilliwack - Yarrow, BC. It was early morning and I was determined to make my way to the rocky shores of Chilliwack River. Salmon spawn had begun and I was hoping to find some photo-action there. 

Somewhere past all this growth would be the rocky shore, river, salmon, sea gulls and, hopefully, not many (preferably none) people.
But I wasn't the only one hoping for zero people, someone else was hoping for the same. 

Barred Owl, Strix varia was taking a morning break after a night's hunt. Unfortunately it was a bit too high and obstructed by the autumn leaves to give me a clear view. It sat with its back to me but as I was trying to provide my camera with a tad better view, the head  pivoted in that typical owl fashion and the eyes, all dark, bore into mine. 

The owls' eyes cannot move in their sockets, and while mine are equipped with muscles that make the eyeballs move, the owls have to turn their heads in that specialized owl fashion. Their neck vertebrae have different structure than ours; so do their neck muscles and veins. They can turn their heads without strangling themselves or cutting off their blood supply to the brain. A really neat study by the scientists at John Hopkins University  only recently shed light on these adaptations..

The owl and I just stared at each other for a while (I wasn't moving my eyeballs either in order not to scare the bird.) When I finally lowered mi sight to look at the camera and back, the owl was gone.

Chillwack River, BC, Canada

Red Admiral ,Vanessa atalanta on wild Butterfly Bush, Buddleia, Chilliwack River

February:
Winter snow has prompted little birds to come closer to the bird feeders in Glade. Large flocks of finches,  redpolls and siskins kept on arriving and leaving and then arriving again. Resident chickadees, jays and flickers kept the place busy non stop. Only Northern Shrike left and none of them seemed to regret it.
However, their happiness did not last long.

A tiny but skillful hunter arrived to take care of mice and aging birds. A Northern Pygmy Owl, Glaucidium 

gnoma took up its residence in the village!  The very first Pygmy Owl that I have ever seen in our neighborhood!

Quite visible to all it settled on a bare branch two meters above the ground. A bunch chickadees mobbed it for a short while but then, foolishly, I thought, lost their interest.

The owl, a cute little fluff, Mother of all Deception, sat there, body motionless, only its head rotating as it tried to keep the track of the birds. Two dark "eye" spots on the back of the head proved to be quite confusing, probably not only to me but to the birds as well. Given its small size of about only 15 cm one was never quite sure what was the owl observing.

Hiding behind the corner about twenty meters away from the bird, I carefully set my tripod and the camera with a 400 mm lens and, fully expecting the bird to fly away, started shooting . My first photos show a tiny bird in the middle of a very large space.
Having those I dared to move the whole setup a bit closer. The owl merely looked in my direction and turned its head some hundred and eighty degrees away as if I wasn't worth looking at. More clicks and more movement .. closer .... and closer .....and closer still until I was mere three meters away! And the owl just sat there as if it could not care less. It allowed me to manoeuvre about to get a better composition, change the depth of field and add a  filter.  Oh, and change the battery as well. Then a friend's car drove down the driveway and he got out and marched right by the owl into the house. The bird merely blinked and looked away.

It was the first sunny afternoon and at about four pm, the  light was soft and low and right behind my back. It was my birthday too and the owl probably decided to grant me a present!

The only thing that seemed to bother it were harsh clicks of the shutter on my camera (here is a gentle suggestion to manufacturers).

The little Pygmy Owl gave me good twenty minutes of its presence before it took off. Its flight was not exactly as quiet as the flight of the night-hunting owl, it does not have its flight feathers equipped with tiny combs for silent flight. There is no reason for such stealth; because it is a day-hunting creature (diurnal), everyone can see it anyway. It was fast though, somewhere in the literature I learned that pygmy owls have been observed to chase and catch small birds in flight. Just have a closer look at it:






Since that day, I'd seen it only once.

Announcing its arrival with a rapid koo-koo-koo-koo-koo-oo it landed on the top of a far-away tree.

It made me wonder, The owls nest early in the season but I am afraid that the woods around here are not old enough for that.