A winged surprise from the north
Toolbox
By Tom Slayton - Published: March 20, 2005
A quiet invasion from the far north has brought hundreds – no, thousands – of silent hunters down to the U.S.-Canada border, and in some places, across it.
This is not something for the border patrol to get riled up about, though the birders I know certainly are excited. Because this is an invasion of owls – great gray owls.
Like many birders, I have had a lifelong fascination with owls. So, for that matter, has the human race. The earliest drawing of any identifiable bird by a human was a cave drawing of an owl.
In folklore and literature down through the ages, owls are often harbingers of evil or death. This is probably because of their association with the night. The Chinese called owls "the bird that snatches the soul." And Shakespeare exploited the owl in several plays. After Macbeth has murdered Duncan, setting in motion the tragedy that bears his name, he is startled by an owl. Lady Macbeth declares:
"It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern'st good-night…"
In Native American folklore and Eskimo folklore, owls are also sometimes seen as wise creatures, or as trickster figures, like the coyote.
But in reality, owls are neither wise nor evil. What they are is fascinating.
Strix nebulosa, the great gray owl, is one of the largest North American owls, almost two and one-half feet tall, with a wingspread spanning nearly five feet. They are imposing, upright birds with tweed-gray plumage and penetrating golden eyes that stare fiercely out of a large, concentrically lined facial disk.
Those electric yellow eyes are disconcerting. They stare at you with the intensity of a leopard, a reminder that if you happened to be a lot smaller, you might be eaten.
Great gray owls are usually a bird of the boreal forests of the far north and are not often seen in this part of the world. But whenever their normal food supply – small rodents – gets scarce up north, the owls come south. It happens about every 10 years or so, and this is one of those winters. The current rodent shortage apparently happened because of last year's cold, wet summer.
As a result, scientists estimate that thousands of owls have flown south into the St. Lawrence Valley and parts of the northern United States. More than 600 great grays have been reported in northern Minnesota alone.
In Vermont, there have been unconfirmed sightings near Westford and East Montpelier. But the most reliable place around here to find the big, northern owls lately has been a park on an island just west of Montreal, Ile Bizard. Six or eight owls have been camped out there for most of the winter.
So not long ago, some friends and I drove up to Quebec, seeking great gray owls.
We found our way to Ile Bizard and were out of our car less than a minute when we saw the first owl. It sat watching us calmly from a thicket near the side of the road. Fifty yards into the park, we saw a second owl. We put spotting scopes on the owls who sat calmly not 50 paces from us. With a powerful scope, you could count the feathers on the owl's face! As we were watching the second owl, a third flew out of a row of nearby trees and a brief territorial tussle ensued. The two owls locked talons and tumbled to the ground, then flew off in opposite directions.
We followed that third owl into a farther field and watched it for awhile. Then we saw two more, one in a tree atop a nearby hill, the other in a brushy hedgerow leading up the hill.
Great gray owls were suddenly everywhere. To add to the festivities, a small flock of Bohemian waxwings flew over us. I walked to the top of the little hill and from there I could see three owls, each keeping watch over its own snowy field. They sat like silent gray sentries, perched high above the park's rolling, abandoned farmland.
But they weren't just passing the time. They were hunting. The owls' yellow eyes are unbelievably acute and that big facial disc funnels sound to their ears so effectively that they can actually hear voles moving around under the snow.
We watched each owl glide slowly out over the field on huge silent wings, hover above its prey, then drop on it, smashing through the snow, grasping and crushing the unfortunate vole with sharp talons. It was lunch time.
Hmm, I thought, the rodent population of Ile Bizard must be wondering what they did wrong, to have this incredible plague of owls descend upon them! But nature doesn't really weigh things in that anthropomorphic sort of way. One life ends, another is sustained, that's all.
And since we were not voles, it felt undeniably magical to be in the company of these great fierce northern owls, to watch them hunt, in a little park right on the outskirts of the biggest city in eastern Canada, and to feel again, vividly and tangibly, the web of life that animates a northern winter.
Tom Slayton is a freelance writer and the editor of Vermont Life magazine.
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