Owl Winter
Shortly after New Year’s I was in the Rockland Hannaford, in the produce section loading up on good intentions, when another shopper stopped me and without introduction queried me on my newspaper column: “What were you talking about last time, anyway?”
I figured that would be coming. I suppose I’m just relieved it didn’t come from this paper’s editors who, I feared, would think all the sixty-four dollar words, philosophy, and math the result of too much egg nog. “I want more bird news,” she made clear. I promised her I would report soon with anything of interest.
We have a friend on this island who is an avid birder. He is 8 years old but has been studying this stuff hard, and he knows his ornithology. He claims to be able to tell the difference between a sharp-shinned hawk and a Cooper’s hawk in flight, which there is no chance I could do. I am no bird expert. I am barely even a beginner. I do love to see an owl, like most of us do, although maybe not as much as the Phone Man does. I have seen my husband run down the road barefoot in the snow to get a look at an owl.
A couple of weeks ago the five of us—the bird kid and both of his parents, and Paul and I—were sitting around my kitchen table late in the afternoon. “A.” (we’ll just go with his initial, with his permission,) is this island’s only wintertime resident child right now, and school for him is everywhere. He stops by on a regular basis to read to us and to engage in meaningful discussions about whatever it is he is reading. These visits most definitely “count as school” but usually end up becoming discussions of British railroad track maintenance or Diesel engine parts or how to tell a Cooper’s hawk from a sharp-shinned hawk. Anyway, school was technically over one recent day, and the two men were chatting about the agonal gasps of yet another piece of island electric company equipment as we lingered over cookies and tea, when A.--positioned at the head of the table--interrupted the adults and pointed directly out the window in front of him. “Owl! Owl!”
The rest of us had to move a little to see anything other than interior reflections on the windowpane, as it had grown dark out, but sure enough there was a saw-whet owl in the bush just outside, looking in at us though the kitchen window
The little owl was—if I may be so unscientific—adorable.
Our eager birder said he noticed the small owl fly downward toward the ground before disappearing. That makes sense, because the bush was full of bird feeders, meaning the ground below it was scattered with spilled seeds, meaning there were generally mice in the vicinity: a good place for an owl to get dinner.
Small owl pellets, which are hocked-up lumps of mouse fur and bones and such, were later found on the ground near the bush.
This has also been a very good winter so far, for snowy owls on Matinicus, with reports of three different owls here lately (I sure haven’t seen three, but I trust my sources). There has been a northern harrier spotted on the island, and somebody said they saw our notorious peregrine falcon again recently. There are loads of cardinals, but that isn’t particularly surprising. They love it here.
Jeff Wells and Rich MacDonald, names well-known to the Maine birder community, had been trying to find a day to visit the island for the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. The unceasing wind not only makes a day birding rather uncomfortable, and interesting sightings less likely, but at a certain point pilots can’t even land here because of the excessive crosswinds. The bird experts finally got to Matinicus on Saturday, January 4th , the same day I was discussing my newspaper ruminations with somebody in the grocery store. Our small neighbor hiked all over the island with the two birders, who identified dozens of species, spotting both a snowy owl and a northern harrier.
The woman in the store mentioned a piece I’d written a couple of years ago (“A Bartender’s Guide to Uncommon Wildlife,” Free Press, January 2022) that rambled on about naming drinks after rare birds. I told her we had still not perfected the Snowy Owl cocktail. We might work on that some more this year.