Wildlife sighting for an August afternoon

  • We were dri­ving home from Sat­ur­day errands yes­ter­day, when Greg sud­denly said, “Oh wait, you have to see this,” and looked for a place to turn the car around. This is always a good time. It means he glimpsed some­thing that went by too fast to point it out, and now we’re just hop­ing it’ll stay in the same place till we can get back. It’s our own lit­tle Wilder­ness Adven­ture, and it comes with a risk. Some­times the Thing stays put and some­times it doesn’t.

    This time it did.

    By the rules of the game, you don’t have to dis­close to the pas­sen­ger what you saw, but Greg did. “This was SO totally an owl!” he said. The rea­son that has to be empha­sized is that we have seen a lot of things that might have been owls, and we’ve even seen some that prob­a­bly had to be owls. But since they only come out as the light fades, you usu­ally don’t get a decent look at them. And unlike the hawks that perch high in a tree where you can see them, owls seem to want to be less obtrusive.

    Except for this one. I didn’t have any prob­lem mak­ing out the place that Greg had in mind, once the car was turned around. It was def­i­nitely a big bird in a tree.

    owl_far.jpg

    Which is fine, y’know, as far as get­ting a decent look at it. But it was such unusual behav­ior for an owl that Greg and I both started to have our doubts. As we got closer, we could make out that it had a kind of round body and head, but then hawks will fluff up some­times if they’re feel­ing sleepy. We didn’t want to get our hopes up.

    owl_closer.jpg

    It was when we started to draw up level with the tree that we could be more def­i­nite. “That’s not a hawk.” “Look at the shape of its head.” “That is SO an owl.”

    And in case there was any doubt, I had the extreme honor as we were pass­ing under­neath its over­hang­ing branch of hav­ing it look down at me as I was look­ing up at it. No mis­tak­ing the ear tufts out­lined against the sky. And I even had a snap­shot glimpse of those large, stern eyes look­ing down at me in sur­prise and dis­ap­proval, as if to say, “Madam, please!”

    owl_right-there.jpg

    How silly is it that things like this make our day?


    Related posts:

    1. Wildlife to Grace — buzz off!
    2. Angry wildlife, part II
    3. Angry wildlife
    4. Oh cool!!
    5. Finally! A nice day in August

    August 3rd, 2008 | Grace | 7 Comments |

7 Responses and Counting...

  • Eliz­a­beth 08.03.2008

    It would have made my day too !

  • DebD

    Oh, that def­i­nitely would have made my day too. We had an owl come perch on one of our trees for an after­noon, a few years ago. You would have thought a movie star had moved in as ALL neigh­bor kids and myself were gog­gling at it for hours.

  • Tanya

    how won­der­ful!

  • Mimi

    I am in awe of your artis­tic skills every time you show­case them! Beau­ti­ful.
    And, it totally would have made my day as well.

  • Word­mama

    Love that sequence of pic­tures, espe­cially with the cap­tion on the last one.

  • Grace

    WM:
    Well, y’know, I think maybe that’s the only rea­son I both­ered to try to cap­ture the moment. That seemed so much like the accu­rate cap­tion for that look, and also it was such a sur­real expe­ri­ence to get that split-second glance up at a shad­owy owl face.

  • Grace

    Mimi:
    That is really such a nice com­pli­ment that I don’t have any response. I’ve always wished I was a bet­ter artist, but I’m try­ing to get the hang of just being as good as I need to be to com­mu­ni­cate an impres­sion. Funny how much of a human con­nec­tion can still result from that.

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