Great Gray Owl: Northern Naturalist #23
Great Gray Owls, "The Rarest Bird You've Ever Seen in Our Yard", Review of Bogs and Fens, plus News and Notes
Great Gray Owl
One cold spring, I stood with a field trip group on the edge of a Tamarack bog. As dusk fell, we waited and watched for a glimpse of a Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa). I had heard a soft whoop call that I presumed to be a female on the nest calling for food. One of my group tapped me on the shoulder. I held my hand up, as if to tell them, “Don’t bother me; I’m listening here.” I got another tap, and then I turned and saw that the tap was to alert me that there was an adult Great Gray perched behind us, peering at us, as if wondering what we were looking at.
It’s always a treat to see a Great Gray. They’re big and rare; and they have a more human aspect than many birds: upright posture, eyes on the front of the face, big head, and stout neck. The Sax-Zim Bog, in northern Minnesota near where I live, is famous for Great Gray Owls. A very few nest there, and in most winters, there are birds to be seen. Then there are winters like this one, when there are hundreds of sightings (all over Northern Minnesota, not just in the Bog).
Over much of their range, they live in areas not visited by humans much, so to see a Great Gray can be difficult and inconvenient. Sax-Zim, however, is an hour from the Duluth airport, and three hours from the Minneapolis-St Paul airport, so for many, it’s the most likely place to come and look for these owls. Over the years, surveys of birders have shown that this is one of the most sought-after species of North American birds.
Great Grays love coniferous forests with some openings. They nest all around the Northern Hemisphere in the right habitat, which is limited. In North America, they nest mainly in Canada and Alaska, with their range dipping down into the lower 48 in Minnesota and in the Rocky Mountains.
Great Gray Owls (like all birds, to be honest) are marvels of adaptation to their home territory. Much of their bulk consists of insulating feathers. Though they are our largest owl in volume, they weigh less than either Great Horned Owl or Snowy Owl. The feathers on their face form a perfect dish for funneling the tiny sounds of small rodents into their ears. They can hear the voles (their main food) beneath the snow, and as the amazing sequence of photos below (by Sparky Stensaas) shows, they will hunt right through the snow in winter.
Their ability to do this, however, may be limited by very deep snow, or by an icy crust on the snow. These conditions, along with prey cycles and the population dynamics of Great Grays themselves, may induce large numbers of owls to leave their home turf in Central and Southern Canada and head south. This is called an “irruption,” rather than an “invasion,” because some Great Grays do nest here already. Owls who come south in the winter are more active during the day and less skittish than our local owls.
You might think it would be hard to confuse a Great Gray with anything else, and you’d be mostly correct. However, at a distance, Barred Owls also have rounded heads (no visible ear tufts) and concentric circles of feathers on the face. Notice, however, that Barred has dark eyes and Great Gray, yellow. Also, a Great Gray will have a most helpful white bowtie mark under their chin that is visible at a distance in low light.
Low light conditions are my favorite time to see Great Grays. They are often well-hidden in the trees, and when one surprises me and lifts into view, it’s always a pleasure.
“The Rarest Bird You’ve Ever Seen in Our Yard”
Our older son, Jonas, then a young boy, came up to me in the back yard and said, “Do you want to see the rarest bird you’ve ever seen in our yard?” He said it calmly, and yet I could tell something was up. Was it a joke?
He led me around the house to the front porch, and there was a Cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus) looking at us from the porch floor. So it was true—undoubtedly the most unusual bird I had ever seen in our yard; and undoubtedly not a wild bird, but an escape from someone’s house. Cockatiels are from Australia, so not likely vagrants, but they are common pets. We looked at ours briefly, and it flew from our porch up into one of the large (very large) Basswood trees in our yard.
This was pre-internet, so I looked in the classifieds in the newspaper, and it turned out that there had been a widespread jail-break of cockatiels that week. There were at least a dozen ads for lost Cockatiels. I started telephoning and mostly got answering machines. One woman picked up and said she would be right over.
When she arrived, she took one look at the bird in the tree and said, “Not my Cockatiel, but we have to catch it. It will be cold tonight, and that bird won’t make it out here. Do you have a ladder?” I said I did, but that I didn’t feature going limb-to-limb trying to catch the Cockatiel. She said, “If you’ll hold it, I’ll go up.” So we got the extension ladder out, set it up against the tree, I held the ladder, and she started up. She cooed and sweet-talked the Cockatiel all the way up, as she moved slowly and carefully toward its perch. She kept purring to the bird, and then, when she got within reach, she suddenly swiped out and grabbed it with surprising aggression, making a clean and safe grab. Then she cooed a little bit more as she descended the ladder, bird in her grasp. She said she’d take care of it, and if anyone else called, send them her way. No one else did, and I never heard if she ever found the owner.
In the case of the Cockatiel, the bird was obviously not wild. Most wild birds are at the other end of the spectrum; that is, obviously wild, or assumed to be wild. Wildness matters in counting rare birds. If an unusual bird shows up that is a species sometimes raised in captivity, then rare bird committees may be asked to make a determination about wildness. The question often hinges on whether there is a potential source of non-wild birds (game farms, pet stores, etc.) nearby. If a domestic species gets established in the wild, according to the criteria of a committee (usually a number of years breeding), then it might be considered wild after a period of having been considered not-wild. For example, Eurasian Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) is now considered wild (and countable) along Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago. For years, they turned up sporadically, and they finally became well-enough established to be considered wild.
I was happy to not have to deal with a frozen Cockatiel in my yard that next morning, but I had reason to believe they were tougher than one might think. After graduation, my college roommate, John, lived in a house with several other guys and a Cockatiel. One day, he was standing in the bathroom shaving, when something rushed at him through the shower curtain. He instinctively reacted with a swat and hit what turned out to be the Cockatiel. The swat sent the bird back hard against the wall of the bathroom, but it quickly regained its composure, suffering no apparent harm.
Later that week, John returned from work to find that the Cockatiel had eaten all the leaves off his Dieffenbachia plant. This plant is known to be poisonous to humans and to pets when consumed, so John thought this would be it for his bird; but happily, the bird showed no ill effects.
All of this happened in late October—in Minnesota, a chilly time of year. John and his roomies had a Halloween party. One of the attendees was dressed as Carmen Miranda, who was famous for wearing a fruit hat (a large headdress made up of various fruits). When the Carmen-costumed attendee left the party, someone saw a bird fly out of her fruit hat as she left the house and reached the front yard. Since the Cockatiel was the only avian resident of the house, it had to be that bird.
Temperatures were well below freezing that night, and yet, when John stumbled to the door the next morning, his bird came right back in through the door. I lost touch with both the bird and with John, so I never heard if that intrepid Cockatiel survived any more brushes with death. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it did.
Review of Bogs & Fens: A Guide to the Peatland Plants of the Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, by Ronald B. Davis, University Press of New England, 2016.
This guide has two parts: an introduction to the ecology of peatlands and their plants, and a section of species descriptions of 100 common plants of peatlands. Ronald B. Davis, a retired biologist, lives in Maine and has been involved with guiding visits to peatland boardwalks for years. It appears to me that this long experience is what has shaped his book’s content.
The book is well-done, with good photos of the plants and landscapes, and easy-to-find plant descriptions. Of course, there are many more than 100 species of plant in a bog or fen; I think the selection of which to include was sensibly-made by including the plants visitors might be most likely to encounter on a brief visit to a boardwalk. The same goes for the ecology section; I can imagine Davis explaining, for example, the difference between a bog and a fen to a group heading out with him on a hike.
Davis gives quite an extensive consideration of the definitions and differences between fens and bogs. He writes that people often refer to both kinds of peatlands as bogs—I know I have been guilty of ignoring fens. The crucial difference is in whether or not the plants are in contact with mineral-bearing soil (fen), or if they need to get minerals from rainfall, dust, or some other way (bog). Why this matters is explained well in Davis’s book, and this is an example of why this is a nice introduction to a complex subject, which is more often covered in large textbooks.
My only criticism of this book is that, in a section about peatland boardwalks one can visit, the section includes all the states westward from Maine to Wisconsin, stopping there, a mile from my house. I guess he had to draw the line somewhere.
Using plants as a lens for peatlands, Davis gets at the interesting and salient ecology. If you’re someone who visits peatlands (I’m looking at you, visitors to the Sax-Zim Bog!), you might find this book helpful.
News and Notes
Each day this past week, as I stood outside waiting for my bus, I could look up and see Blue Jays migrating past. The week was a river of Blue Jays. Each morning, in just a few minutes, I saw at least a hundred, and some days several hundred, Blue Jays flying north. This is not unexpected here on Minnesota Point in Duluth (Minnesota, USA), but it is remarkable. Blue Jays are mostly non-migratory. They inhabit territories and stay there year-round. It is thought that no more than 20% of the population migrates. Throughout their range (all of the eastern United States and southern Canada), they are a common bird, but still, seeing this kind of migration is quite something. Imagine if they all migrated!
As this issue is published, I will be at the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival, giving a headliner talk about the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog, leading a field trip, and taking in a lot of birding-related fun. I’m brushing up on my Eastern warblers and other species that I don’t get to see here that much. If you’re at the festival, please say hello.
Researchers in Berlin verified something that many have suspected—birdsong can alleviate anxiety and paranoia (Actually, I had no idea about the paranoia part, but it makes sense.) We’re at the beginning of the best birdsong time of the year. Get out there and start healing!
“Still dark, and raining hard
on a cold, May morning
and yet the early bird
is out there chirping,”
Lines from the poem, “The Early Bird,” by Ted Kooser
My friend (and subscriber), Paul Englund, sent me a different bird poem, about a screech owl, by Ted Kooser, and that led me to this one. No matter what the weather, the early bird is indeed out there chirping; and I thank you for reading, whatever the weather.
I agree about the benefit of birdsong. An Oriole returned faithfully to my backyard for the 26th year and his varied and beautiful song never fails to uplift my spirits. Thank you for another great article.
I enjoyed the article and I always learn so much. Thank you!