Pete Dunne tells the story (and I like to repeat it) that one must be pure of heart to see most owls. He was speaking specifically of a particular barn owl that was purported to roost in a hacking box at Brigantine Wildlife Refuge years ago. At the time, I suspected his tactic was common among field trip leaders; an excuse for failing to produce an owl for a group of disappointed birders after having stood around in the freezing cold for hours, waiting.
In the intervening years, since having waited many times in the freezing cold for my own fair share of owls, I’ve come to understand the truth in Pete’s story. Owls are the stuff of imagination. Seeing these keepers of shadow requires exploring the edges of light… if one fails at it, the fault lies not in the seeing, but instead with one’s way of looking.
I’ve been sort of surprised in the last couple years to discover that I’m having trouble spotting birds… my distance vision is deserting me to the point that before long I’ll have to wear glasses when birding; glasses that I’ve stubbornly (and vainly) refused to wear anytime other than when I drive. I’ve become a dedicated listener instead: birdsongs I don’t recognize or can’t identify will drive me to distraction, but songs or calls help with only the easiest of owls.
Just as the omnipresence of noise makes it difficult to distinguish any one singer in the dawn chorus, the profane in a grove of pines can fill every nook and cranny of our time and space; the fertile silence that makes looking (and really seeing) is easily lost. When spotting owls, the looking is an art. Without true attention to it, an integral part of the reverence is destroyed… only the pure in heart are granted sight.
(Or you have a friend along who’s better at it.)
I was distracted with the trees and the pellets and the scattered bits of bone and feathers, the place this little forest made around me; no two trees the same, every branch saying HERE. I couldn’t stand still and let the trees (or the owls) find me.
It is the moon
not the finger
pointing at the moon
that calls us
back to ourselves
“The resemblance between Cooper’s Hawk and the Sharp-shinned is not confined to color, but extends to habit, the Cooper being, if anything, because of its superior size, fiercer and more destructive. It will dash into the farmyard like a bolt, passing within a few feet of individuals and carrying off a young chicken with incredible swiftness.”
“The attack is accomplished so suddenly that, unless the gun is in hand, the robber always escapes. There is no time to run even a few yards for a weapon – the thief is gone before it can be reached. If there is plenty of thick cover in the run, the chickens will often escape, especially the more active breeds, like Leghorns. At my home, I have repeatedly seen them strike, but as the foliage is dense and brushy they have invariably been unsuccessful in securing the quarry. In four years we have not lost a chicken by Hawks.”
An idea, maybe, Kev?
“Cooper’s Hawk is preeminently a “chicken hawk” and is by far the most destructive species we have to contend with. Although not so large as the Goshawk, it is strong enough to carry away a good-sized chicken, grouse, or cottontail rabbit. It is especially fond of domesticated Doves, and when it finds a cote easy of approach or near its nesting site, the inmates usually disappear at the rate of one or two a day until the owner takes a hand in the game.”
How field guides have changed in 90-some years!
Hawks, however, haven’t changed in all those years. Late winter is lean for them and they’re getting desperate. Backyard chickens make for an easy meal. I’m glad my brother saves his ire for the woodchucks that raid his garden and reaches for his camera when Cooper comes-a-calling, rather than a weapon.
Reference info from Birds of America, first published in 1917.
All pics by the Reluctant Chicken Farmer.
1. My chin. I was 8-ish and got a ride in an ambulance and seven stitches. I cried bloody murder.
2. Multiple iPods. Mostly by coffee. Most recently by blatant overuse.
3. Rules, hearts and promises.
4. My little girl princess canopy bed. (Yes I was jumping on it!)
5. A chair… my brother being the intended target. The chair mostly survived, but things with my brother haven’t been the same since.
6. A couple cars. Sometimes whole important parts of them fell off; others just steamed and hissed at me for mysterious reasons.
7. The copy machine at work. I break it at least once a week. (I am that person.) I try to unjam it before walking away… honest I do!
What can I say, dear friend, to ease your heart in its breaking?
There are no perfect words when someone dies; there is no easy way through pain.
We grasp for comfort, but grief has a way of hitting like a tidal wave; it’s hard to find a steady place to stand when your whole world is upside down.
Know this: that each day is a treasure and that love is its own reward.
I still believe in prayer and that something good and kind comes from it.
My prayer for you is that you continue to reach out
and ask for what you need
that you are able to say what you need to say
and that you go easy on yourself.
Please help me to care for you now
the way you have done for so many and for me
Take your time…
Understand there is no right or wrong way
Carry on…
Let me stand beside you again.
When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing: the world was meant to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you…
~David Whyte
Lower range light at Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin
I’ve sort of fallen off the bandwagon the last month or so with my stranger pics… probably I’ve lost my nerve for it, but this guy…
Hmm.
Everything about him wanted to be photographed, I think.
😉
I dashed up to him across the jetty, asked his permission, snapped the photo and dashed off… feeling really, really embarrassed.
I wonder what it is that makes a stranger feel approachable enough to me…
I wonder what it is that makes a stranger interesting enough…
I wonder why I haven’t had the nerve yet to approach a woman…
This photo is #4 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at Flickr 100 Strangers or www.100Strangers.com
Other names: Sea dotterel; Sea quail; Sand-runner; Stone-pecker; Horsefoot snipe; Brant-bird; Bead-bird; Checkered snipe; Red-legs; Red-legged plover; Chicken plover; Calico-back; Calico-jacket; Sparked-back; Streaked-back; Chuckatuck; Creddock; Jinny; Bishop plover.
… I had an exceptional chance to watch… The select company was “one little Turnstone and I,” the latter armed with binoculars, the former too busy to notice intruders. He was a fine gentleman, dressed in the gaudiest calico possible for the fall fashions, yet not too proud to work for his supper. His method was not unlike that of the proverbial bull in the china shop, for he trotted about, tossing nearly everything that came in his way. Inserting the wedge of his bill under a pebble, a shell, or what not, he would give a real toss of his imperious head, and flop over it would go. His efforts seemed to be well rewarded, for he fed there for some time. It is in search of such prey that the turner of stones operates, a cog in the wheel of the system of nature, which decrees that every possible corner and crevice of the great system shall have its guardian, even the tiny spot of ground beneath the pebble on the beach.
Info from Birds of America, first published in 1917 and which includes color plates of Louis Agassiz Fuertes’ paintings. Said book made for good company this evening.
The Turnstones were not so much trotting about as they were, instead, slip-sliding along the jetty rocks yesterday while they fed. There were no stones to be turned; in fact I wondered just what they were finding edible among the waves.
A return trip today to Barnegat Light with the Monmouth County Audubon Society was graced by many of the same species as last week’s visit, plus a new one!
This harbor seal had hauled itself up onto the rocks of a small jetty behind the lighthouse to rest and soak up some sun, much to our delight. They’re fairly common here in winter, but this is the closest I’ve ever seen one. They have small rounded heads and whiskered snouts, but it’s their huge and soulful eyes that establish the resemblance with a more blubbery version of man’s best friend.
It was really sweet to watch it nearly tipping off the rocks as it napped! The seal seemed well aware of, yet unconcerned with the group of admirers that had gathered at the base of the lighthouse to watch it.
Many thanks to Steve for letting me use his big lens for these closer-up views.
High tide and a heavy surf had rearranged the sea ducks and shorebirds in new patterns. The jetty was impossibly dangerous today… so hardly any harlequins were within view, but the crashing waves beyond the jetty were black with ducks!
😉
There were big numbers of long-tails and lots of scoters (black and surf) close within the inlet, disappearing and reappearing behind the swells… a real treat! I also saw quite a few common eiders looking just like the field guides say they should… sweet!
(Of course there’s no pictures… I wasn’t about to climb up on the jetty and get soaking wet or worse.)
The purple sandpipers, dunlin, ruddy turnstones and a lone sanderling were mostly feeding on the lee side of the jetty… out of the wind and the crashing waves. They’re all so inconspicuous somehow, looking like nothing more than jetty rock, until you realize that the rocks are moving and alive with birds.
I often wonder why in the world I do this… why I stand out in the cold until my hands and lips are numb… just to see birds that I’ve seen any number of times before in much less awful conditions?
It’s mostly ritual, I think, like waiting for woodcock in an early spring dusk or estimating the number of swallows that might rise from the phragmites at North Pond on a late summer dawn.
What’s not often mentioned among birders is the time spent scanning the horizon, that distant magic place where sky and sea or sky and land converge to ignite the imagination. The time spent looking at nothing. You have to be patient when you look there. You might not see anything new… or see anything at all, but you have to look and wait, just in case.
Some people don’t ever want to look into that distance. Some people won’t tolerate the discomfort of it.
(Wimps!)
Sometimes the best thing I find while scanning that distance is inside me, anyway.
