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.

"Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?"

Owls have long been regarded as creatures of mystery and are held in awe by people in many cultures. In the contemporary popular imagination they are characterized as birds that possess great wisdom, but just as often they are viewed with fear and suspicion. Navajos, for example, traditionally see them as harbingers of death, or as the consorts of witches or other evil spirits. The fact that owls are creatures of the night and thus rarely seen goes a long way to building the aura of inscrutability that surrounds them. Also, their role as predators--many of them very large and powerful predators!--contributes to their reputation as birds to be reckoned with, and that must be treated with respect.

I love owls. Always have. Never see enough of them. I wish we had owls in our woods, if for no other reason than to keep the chipmunk and gray squirrel population in check. Only once have I heard owls here. One night, or, more precisely, very early one morning, last summer, when I was up late writing and had the windows open, I heard a pair of Barred Owls having a bit of a conversation in the woods down near the river. I daresay that the call of the Barred Owl is the one that is most familiar to the most people; the "who cooks for you?" pattern is easily recognized. And easily imitated. I have, on numerous occasions, had conversations with Barred owls at various spots in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Kentucky. Sometimes of an evening I venture onto our screen porch here in Maine and try to call one up, so far without success.

But they are certainly around. An acquaintance on the Maine birding e-mail list who lives across the Mousam River, and somewhat upstream from us, has had a Barred Owl around regularly recently, and there are fairly frequent reports of them from around the state.  Barred Owls are generally regarded as the most common large owl in New England, and because they do sometimes hunt during the day, if people have a casual sighting of an owl it's most likely to be of a Barred Owl.

F'rinstance.....my son and daughter-in-law from California visited after Christmas this year. On the afternoon of December 30 we went for a drive around the area.  As we got near Cape Porpoise, just up the coast from Kennebunkport, Veronica suddenly said: "There's an owl!" I turned my head just in time to catch a glimpse of a nice Barred Owl perched low in a tree, right next to the road. I turned the car around and approached it slowly, pulling over to the right side of the road several feet shy of the owl.

My son, Dave, was in the back seat, on the right side of the car, and had his camera in hand. He lowered the window in the car and was able to get numerous nice shots through the open window.

 

The owl seemed unconcerned by our presence so Dave pushed his luck, slowly opened the car door, and got out. This gave him the chance to get some even closer shots, including a great one of the bird's impressive talons.

Woe be unto the mouse or chipmunk unfortunate enough to get in the path of this guy when he's in search of dinner!

Dave continued to creep ever closer and ended up getting a terrific portrait:

Eventually the owl decided he'd reached the limit of his tolerance and took off across the road, disappearing into the trees in the cemetery on the other side. Of course he did so just at a time when Dave was reviewing shots on his camera and was not poised to shoot, so he was not able to get any good photos of the bird in flight. But we were all delighted to have had such a long, clear, close look at this magnificent bird!

Ironically, the previous time I'd gotten what my friend Melissa calls a "walk-away look" at a Barred Owl [i.e., you have the chance to look at a bird as long as you care to and walk away only when you're good and ready] I was also with Dave. That time it was at Radnor Lake State Park, in Nashville, TN, early in January 2009. We were not far from the east parking lot, just beginning our walk around the lake, when we spotted an owl flying in the woods to our right, fairly close to the road. He landed in a tree on a limb overhanging a small creek, and was wonderfully visible from the trail. We stood on the bridge over the creek and Dave took numerous photos of the owl.  As he was shooting away I told him to relish the moment, because he'd never again get such a good look at a Barred Owl, or have a such good photo op with one! Boy was I wrong...happily so!

Tennessee owl.

As always, click on any of the photos to see larger copies of them.

I'll be back with a second post on Barred Owls soon!