Seven Owls, One New York Winter

Owls may be quiet, secretive, and hard to find, but this past winter was an incredible winter for owls for me. I luxuriated in long looks of Snowy, Great Horned, Long-eared, Short-eared, and Northern Saw-Whet owls, and while less thrilling but no less important, caught vocalizations of both Barred and Screech owls.

My first Life Owl of the season was a Long-eared Owl. Two buddies and I — including the illustrious Mike Bergin of 10,000Birds.com — sniffed out the bird as it was being mobbed by a flock of Blue Jays in a park just east of Rochester, NY. Mike B. immortalized that adventure here on his blog.

Long-eared Owl at Webster Park, NY

While the Long-eared was an unexpected and welcome find, I credit other sightings to the contributions of birders who post their sightings on my local listserv (Genesee Birds).

Wintering populations of birds aren’t hard to find as you may think. You just need to know where to go, and that’s why birding listservs are so valuable. They make us birders look like we have mystical powers to non-birders, and not ONE of us is going to tell them otherwise!

Of course, there ARE such keen-eyed birders for whom rarities seem to fall out of the sky. But the rest of us get on the horn, the line, the laptop, the iPhone, or the e-Bird to see what everybody else is seeing. And then we hit the road and scout these locations.

This winter, Snowy Owls populated the Lake Ontario lakeshore in full force, popping up on piers, ponds, and other places, even on top of a local Circuit City building.

One Snowy Owl even showed up at my sons’ school playground! Hundreds of kids lined up at the school windows to watch the raptor of Hogwart’s legend sit in command of the monkey bars for twelve storybook minutes.

Snowy Owl. Photo by Heather Graney

Somehow, nobody called ME about this. Instead, I sat not FOUR-TENTHS OF A MILE from the bird, tapping keys at my desk, oblivious to the fact that the only thing separating me from my FIRST SNOWY OWL IN EIGHT YEARS was one village block and two soccer fields!

That close call fed a wild, not-to-be-contained urge to not let one sighting pass me by this winter.

So I started following the bird listserv more closely than ever before and began making  special road trips to spot birds before they got away.

First, I chased this Snowy Owl to Buck Pond in Greece, NY. He was a patient bird, but it was a cold, blustery day and I had my old, crappy camera, so this is the best shot I got.

Snowy Owl at Buck Pond, Greece, NY. See location on map, below.

Soon after, I saw the Long-eared Owl at Webster Park with Mike. That experience gave me this crazy, nut-job idea that we’d go after a THREE-OWL WEEK in mid-December. To Mike, this was a foolish and greedy pursuit, impossible to imagine.

Yet a three-owl week would be easy!

Doran Road in Lima, NY is an extremely reliable winter foraging site for a band of Short-eared Owls (I observed a staggering TWELVE Short-eared’s hunting the fields here during my first visit in 2007).  This day, as Mike relates in his Three-Owl Week post, we had our bird in less than 1 second flat, thanks to another birder who had his scope trained on this owl as soon as we exited our vehicles:

Short-eared Owl in Lima, NY. See Mike's post (link above) for the story on his dramatic stare-down with a Short-eared that evening.

Of course, after this I was jonesing to make it a Four-Owl Week, but owls were scarce in mid-December. So I waited until February, the onset of owl migration, before venturing forth again.

First I hit Bergen Swamp (Genesee County, NY) with Jeanne Skelly and Brad Carlson. Bergen Swamp is a fantastic marl-and-peat mosaic surrounded by a spooky hemlock forest. The Swamp is a great location for resident owls, such as Barred, Great Horned, Long-eared, Northern Saw-whet, and Eastern Screech (Bob Spahn, personal comm.). Unfortunately, this early trip turned up only two hooting Barreds and a handful of winter finches (Common Redpolls and White-winged Crossbills).

(I’m resisting the irrelevant urge to tell you I picked up my LIFE Hoary Redpoll at a different location that day…but oops, I failed…)

This is not an owl. It is a White-winged Crossbill.

Soon enough, it was Owlin’ Time here in upstate New York, and I’d soon understand how OWL WOODS (a small patch of woods south of Braddock Bay) got its namesake.

A shallow water bay-marsh complex extends along Lake Ontario just west of Rochester, NY. It attracts gobs of wintering waterfowl and a handful of Snowy Owls. Owl Woods, just south of Braddock Bay, attracts several species of migrating owls.

As I sat at my work desk, eyeballs blistering from HTML- and PHP-overload, the listserv gently tapped on my shoulder, reminding me that a significant migration event was underway and that I didn’t have the luxury of waiting until this or that project was complete before I could witness its glory (I’m a bad influence, aren’t I?).

One day it became all too much and I jumped up and headed to Owl Woods, again with Brad. We gingerly hiked through the woods on deadly ice floes that caked the trails. We fell more than once, me desperately clutching my new Nikon D90 for fear that it would go the way of my first iPhone (a story for a future post). We stepped quietly through the woods and checked the boughs of every spruce in search of Northern Saw-Whet Owls.

Our careful search turned up two very precious and tolerant Saw-whets. This one was marinating a mouse for evening’s repast:

Northern Saw-Whet Owl marinating a mouse.

I’d never seen such excellent and close views of an owl since, well, the Long-eared Owl at Webster Park.

A curious Northern Saw-Whet Owl at Owl Woods, NY

Two owls was good. But a smoker never drags just one cigarette. A lush never sips just one glass…

Reports from the listserv said there’d also been a Great Horned Owl hanging about. So I returned to Owl Woods two more times in the following weeks and brought my family.

The first time, we struck out completely.

The second time I brought Paul and my 7-year old son Jack and we scored Jack’s FIRST OWL EVER:

Jack spots his first owl just 10 feet away. See that open mouth? Previous to this, only a giant mound of Sweet Tarts or the entire Star Wars Episodes 1-6 DVD set could bring that out of him.

Jack was looking at this little guy:

Northern Saw-Whet, Owl Woods, NY

Each of us also scored our LIFE sighting of Great Horned (though I’d heard them before). This majestic raptor sat high atop a pine tree at the edge of someone’s yard, just daring us to give him the bizness. A few quick snaps, sans tripod, and we were outta there…

Great Horned Owl atop an enormous pine tree, Owl Woods, NY. Trust me, I'm getting better with the Nikon.

Including the Screech Owl heard in my neighborhood, I closed out the winter of 2008-2009 with the sights or sounds of SEVEN OWL SPECIES, including THREE LIFERS.

The list, once more:

• Long-eared Owl (lifer)
• Snowy Owl
• Short-eared Owl
• Barred Owl
• Screech Owl
• Northern Saw-Whet (lifer)
• Great Horned Owl (lifer)

A Barn Owl would have made it a clean sweep of the regularly occurring* Owls of New York, and believe me, I have a plan to make this highly unlikely event happen before another year goes by…

My owlin’ good fortune is not lost on me.  Most people go their entire lives without a single owl, others may stumble upon one during one fortuitous nighttime prowl.

Whereas I owe one sighting on my list to Lady Luck, the rest I owe to the network of birders around me and before me who collect and share their observations through listservs, e-Bird forms, Breeding Bird Surveys, Christmas Bird Counts, etc.

And to all of them, a big THANK YOU.

You are feeding my addiction. I believe my therapist calls you “enablers.”

****

* File this in the I Coulda Been a Contenda category… Whereas the species listed in this post are regulars, four other species are irregularly spotted in New York (the Sibleyan green dots) and should always be reported to the NY State Records Committee. These include: Northern Hawk Owl, Boreal Owl, Great Gray Owl, and Burrowing Owl.

If I’d ONLY taken that guided trip to Amherst Island (Canada) like I wanted to, I coulda added the first three to take TEN OWL SPECIES and SIX LIFERS in the winter of ’08-09. Now THAT would have blown my freakin’ mind.

Extreme Birding is about leaving no regrets…what specialties will YOU chase this week?