Barred Owls, Part 2

A few odds and ends to follow up on my post about Barred Owls from two days ago.

A nice framed print of Audubon's rendering of the Barred Owl is among the numerous bird images that hang in our home. It's a decent copy of the engraving that appeared in Audubon's magnum opus, The Birds of America. 

The image depicts the owl poised to nab a gray squirrel, one of his favorite menu items. The squirrel seems to be unnaturally cooperative, just sitting there, waiting to be snatched up. While it is true that Audubon took some flak for portraying scenes that were not always scientifically accurate, in this instance the fault may lie not with him, but with Robert Havell, the English engraver who transformed Audubon's original art works into images for the printed page. In Audubon's original painting there is no squirrel:

 

Audubon rendered the squirrel separately, and Havell combined the two images when he did the engraving. The original painting of the squirrel was, I believe, of a single animal, but it was used yet again in Audubon's second great work, The Quadrupeds of North America, with a companion added to the composition:

Audubon wrote of the Barred Owl [in his Ornithological Biography] that it "...is found in all those parts of the United States which I have visited, and is a constant resident. In Louisiana it seems to be more abundant than in any other state. It is almost impossible to travel eight or ten miles in any of the retired woods there, without seeing several of them even in broad day; and, at the approach of night, their cries are heard proceeding from every part of the forest around the plantations." [Text and images taken from the site Audubon Images.] 

Many other writers talk of the Barred Owl's relative abundance. Arthur Cleveland Bent, in his Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey, characterizes it as "our commonest large owl." Bent describes some of its habits: "It is a forest-loving bird, living mainly in the deep, dark woods, heavily wooded swamps, gloomy hemlock forests, or thick growths of tall, dense pines, where it spends most of the day in the quiet seclusion of its shady retreats. In such resorts it is seldom disturbed, but when its haunts are invaded it is not caught napping; it often greets the intruder with its weird hooting notes and flies about quite actively, even in broad daylight. Much of its hunting is done in the open country and about the farms, and in fall and winter it occasionally ventures into the villages and even into cities in search of food. "

Although modern ornithologists recognize only a single species of Barred Owl, given the Latin name Strix varia, in Bent's time [1937-38] there were thought to be two distinct species: the Northern (Strix varia varia) and Florida (Strix varia alleni). I do not know when the two were collapsed into one.

The Barred Owl has not just been the subject of painters and photographers, but of poets as well. Distinguished American poet Richard Wilbur has written of calming a young girl's fears engendered by hearing an owl's cry, in his poem, "A Barred Owl." The text, and an audio file of the poet reading his own work, can be found at the Poetry Archive. 

Then, of course, the bird's name itself has great literary connotations! Once, following a birding expedition on which I'd seen a Barred Owl, a friend who is an English professor and birder himself, asked if I'd seen any good birds. I told him that the most interesting thing I'd seen had been a "Shakespeare owl."  He didn't get it... 

Lots more information about all sorts of owls can be found on The Owl Pages. I've just barely begun to explore them. For a lovely online presentation of all the images from Birds of America, check out this virtual catalog from the Musée de la Civilisation in Montreal.