Marie Winn

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Saw Whet Owl courtesy of David Mitchell on Flickr

I’m surprised I don’t have neck cramps more regularly, and that I don’t fall over more often. I spend a lot of time looking up when I walk, and this time of year there is a lot to see. Yes, most trees are bare, and, yes, a fair number of birds have migrated, but the bare trees also mean that there is a chance to see what’s obstructed by foliage for at least half of the year. There are some gorgeous wasp nests and dreys, to start with, even if you never see a bird. But, of course, you will see birds, seemingly oblivious to the cold and going about their day-to-day lives finding food and exploring and preening and seemingly undertaking great acrobatics to avoid our binoculars. While you wait for the birds, let the squirrels entertain you.

I have been obsessed with the idea of spotting an owl in a tree for quite some time now. I even wrote to the Facebook group I am in, Connecticut Birds, and was advised to try going out in the evening. Ah hah! I am a morning walker 98% of the time, which may explain the complete lack of owls spotted during my excursions. Apparently they are noisier at night, which now that I think that through is a fact probably obvious to any second grader. Still, I know that owls sleep in trees during the day. I know that they have been known to perch in tree hollows. Every dark hole in every tree is a target for my binocs. Where are they all hiding?

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Eagle Owl silhouette courtesy of Peter G W Jones on Flickr

It may be Central Park in the Dark that started this obsession for me. Marie Winn describes coming upon a sleeping Saw Whet owl roosting in the Shakespeare Garden. The first sighting is no easy task. She writes:

You can scan a tree with your finest binoculars and swear there’s no owl there. Only if you know an owl’s in a certain tree…will you continue the excruciatingly careful, inch-by- inch examination necessary to know that a certain bump on a branch is actually a perfectly camouflaged sleeping saw-whet.

But, even knowing that patience and luck and perhaps some insider trading of owl intelligence is required for such an achievement, I became absolutely jealous when I read Mary Oliver’s piece “Owls” in her profoundly inspiring collection of essays, Upstream. First of all, I am jealous of Oliver’s writing prowess! Take this swoon-worthy prose:

And I search in the deeper woods, past fire roads and the bike trail, among the black oaks and the taller pines, in the silent blue afternoons, when the sand is still frozen and the snow falls slowly and aimlessly, and the whole world smells like water in an iron cup.

It only gets better after this sentence, but best to just buy the book so you can swoon, too. When I read it, part of me wants to give up on writing altogether, and my better half wants to pick up Oliver’s torch and write better, write more. These two sides continue to war.

I’m not only jealous of Oliver’s writing. I am jealous of the content of this particular essay. This statement, for example: “I have seen plenty of owls.” A bit later: “I have seen them in every part of the woods.” Still later: “But the owls themselves are not hard to find…” If I didn’t know that Oliver is a kind soul I would think she was mocking me personally.

Screech Owl courtesy of Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith on Flickr

Maybe I need an apple tree. Gavin gave me The Birds of John Burroughs for Christmas, and he writes about a “little red owl” in an apple tree, its presence made apparent to him by jays and nuthatches who loudly proclaimed their wish to see it gone. He writes, “After accustoming my eye to the faint light of the cavity for a few moments, I could usually make out the owl at the bottom, feigning sleep.” He knew the sleep was feigned because on one occasion when he had to cut into the tree, the bird continued to “sleep” until Burroughs physically pulled it out of its spot! Then it freaked out and became quite menacing. Tricky beasts, these owls.

Much of time in nature is, for me, time in faith. Faith that I will learn something. Faith that I may encounter a surprise. Faith in quietude and in cycles and in the mundane noises. Faith that I will return to this spot again, and also find new spots. Faith that goes deeper than just the trail and the wild itself; the kind of faith that Emily Dickinson described so famously and well

Yes, Emily, we are cut from the same cloth, in that we both believe that “instead of getting to Heaven, at last”, we are “going all along.” In many ways, my walking shoes are my pearly gates.

Wishing you the deep faith of looking for owls, and the peace that comes with the path. (Photos here courtesy of luckier walkers with better cameras and Flickr, until I can supply my own firsthand owl snapshots).

Barn Owls by Georgie Sharp on Flickr

Lately, I’ve been reading Central Park in the Dark, by the same author (Marie Winn) who wrote Red Tails in Love. Her reports of a robust animal and insect world thriving right in midtown Manhattan are such a comfort to me. And they remind me that, with nature, there is always much more going on than what we notice at a casual glance.

Take moths, for example. They have always loved my porch, but this year they are finding their way inside more, to the grow light that overhangs my modest crop of hydroponic tomatoes. They flitter their way into the sink way too often—are they seeking hydration or just attracted to the water’s glimmer? In any case, I have made valiant, if not always successful, efforts to rescue them. The antique milk can on the porch has become a moth rehab facility–a place where they go to dry out. Bonus fact, which I learned after writing a poem about moths alighting on my arms: they crave the salt in our skin! We might not think as kindly of them if they found ways to extract it the way female mosquitoes, or ticks, access what they find to be our most alluring qualities.

I was reminded, however, by the Central Park book that most moths’ lifespans amount to less than a few weeks. This greatly saddened Gavin, so I told him about something else that I had learned about: the idea of umwelt. A musty but lovely second-hand book I found, The View from the Oak (Judith and Herbert Kohl), talks about a term used by another nature writer “to describe the world around a living thing as that creature experiences it.” Imagine, for example being an ant, living your whole life in a particular corner of a field, pebbles like boulders to you and your vibratory sense your only means of communication. That experience, that way of living and perceiving, is your ant umwelt. I apply that same concept to time, too. The moth that lives its full few weeks is likely not comparing itself with humans and crying over its piteously short stay on the earth. We humans have our own time umwelt, so we don’t tend to bristle over the lifespans of Galapagos Giant Tortoises, who live for upwards of 100 years (or Ocean Quahogs, who can live for 400+!).

Another umwelt I found myself wondering about was the perspective of the slug. Of course, I’ve seen slugs here and there throughout my life, but only on a recent jaunt at Fountain Hill did I notice groups of them sitting on mushroom caps.

Can you see the 4 slugs feasting?

How long did it take them to climb up there? Was it like summiting a high mountain peak? It made me wonder if slugs eat mushrooms, and the article I found from a 2010 issue of Fungi was called What We Don’t Know About Slugs and Mushrooms—the scientists seem pretty clear that slugs eat fungi but not so clear on specifics. One of the problems is that it’s the mushrooms, not the slugs, that are usually the subject of any the available photos that might prove slug fungus consumption, and most of the time photographers don’t want to photograph the slugs at all. It’s not just with most photographers that slugs get a bad rap—and I understand that they eat our garden greens—but I do think that if they were better looking they might be treated better. Hopefully in their own little slug umwelt they don’t realize how their slimy looks count against them. But if they do, Gavin reminded me that there is an Ugly Animals Preservation Society that they can turn to for support.

July is such a rich, moist, spilling-over-with-abundance time in Connecticut. This morning I counted 13 rabbits on my walk down to Town Dock, and funnel webs from the grass spiders, highlighted by the dew, dotted nearly every lawn—an uncountable array of spider condo complexes. My own, personal umwelt is a happy one because of this.