More Barred Owl - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

She is getting more gorgeous every day I see her. She comes into the clearing every day at 4:00 like clockwork. This allows me to hone my photography skills which you can track from the beginning of this blog to the last two pictures of Brer Owl.

Barred Owl - Fitchburg, Massachusetts

"One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which be preserved a pennisular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day. "

Thoreau - WALDEN
(Chapter XIV Former Inhabitants; and winter visitors)

Barred Owl - Fitchburg, MA. December 16-20, 2007

I initiate this blog with my recent encounters with a Barred Owl. I first saw it from my kitchen window facing the backyard. I saw a flurry of activity in the snow at the base of a tree. I thought, at first, that it was a wounded crow so I went outside to look further. The bird, which I no longer thought was a crow, flew up to alight onto a tree branch. I went over to see what kind of bird it was and to my delight saw that it was a Barred Owl. his owl, over the next few days, responded favorably to calls, both recorded and mimicked by myself. Last night, it came on its own volition. I fear, however, that it may be getting hungrier for the snow is deep and the crust of it is frozen. It's frst attack on a vole or shrew found it stuck in the snow and unable to free itself with an animal in its clutch.

Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden: "I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and underdeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all [men] have."