A Winter Encounter with a Great Horned Owl

It was a winter day, dismal in ways only winter can be. I was just strolling around my property. Then, a gray apparition out of the corner of my eye made my heart stop just before my feet. Not many things can be both that large and that silent. I was not spooked, more so in awe. Enchanted even. Stock still, I stood there, thinking to myself: “Did I really just see an owl?” Maybe it was. Maybe it was nothing. Probably nothing

The Language of Winter Air

It’s a unique gift to hear an owl call in the dark of night, but strangely enchanting during the afternoon. On windless winter days, their hooting calls, just like the hoots and howls of a coyote pack, can penetrate the walls of my home. Yet, their utterly silent flight is on the exact opposite of the sound spectrum. I experienced this first hand when one flew out of a pine tree and across the meadow one afternoon while I was strolling the yard. The unusually cold January brought with it some unique activity. Perhaps it wasn’t nothing after all, that sighting that I felt deep in my core. Throughout the month, the windows rattled louder than they I can remember, the house creaked in cracked in ways I hope to never hear again, and on more than one occasion I had great horned owls making calls in the middle of the afternoon. Several dates stick out in my nature journal with notes about either one owl or sometimes two making calls back and forth.

The Cat Tale

Oddly, one day, even a stray cat showed up, patrolling the backyard. Which I know are usually reserved for the foreboding of a dark event when the cat is a certain color. But, this time, the floof factor on this particular feline sparked the curiosity of my teen daughter and she walked outside to see if the cat would become friend or foe. Perhaps it belongs to the new neighbors? The cat darted off long before she was within any distance of the thing and she happened to be walking that same path I took toward the pine myself. Completely unbeknownst to her, TWO owls flew out of the same pine that I had walked near some twenty days before. I watched the whole thing from the kitchen window. Again, my heart temporarily stopped.

Knowing my daughter is one to weave a tale, I assumed she was well aware of what flew right over her head but was acting oblivious to the circumstance. I could imagine her playing me. When she came into the house “pretending”, or so I thought she was, I could barely contain myself. “You DO know that two owls just flew right over your head?” I asked her excitedly. It turned out, she had no clue. They are just that silent.

We never saw the cat again.

The following week, again, I heard an owl in the yard while I was in the kitchen. A distant hoot during the midday. It was a very cold day, barely above 30°, overcast, February’s finest. The sun wanted to hide behind a thick blanket of clouds. Not sure what in me decided to pick up binoculars and take aim at the pine where that owl had been before, but I did. (The call was not even coming from that direction.) But just as much as mistakes are the way you learn, opportunities are missed if you don’t at least try.

It was as if I was playing a nasty April Fools’ joke when I proclaimed to my husband across the kitchen, “He’s there, the owl is IN THE PINE!”

Miraculously, my husband actually believed me. A roosting owl, in the middle of the day. One or both eyes trying to catch a wink deep in the protection of the mature trees. The opportunity to photograph an owl in the daytime was no joke. I gathered my gear, put on my parka and went outside. My fingers frozen, but the rest of me was bursting with heated excitement. I heard a train approaching and quickly thought, well that’s it, my last few shots will be over as the loud roar of the train behind our home bursts past.

But it wasn’t. I spent close to forty-five minutes with that owl. He, in the tree, me, hiding behind some bushes not far from the kitchen window. Blocking out the numbness in my fingers. It. Was. Cold.

Where There’s Crows, There’s a Story

When I look back at this experience, there is one more charm to add to the bracelet of this story. In those blustery cold days leading up to my first moment of enchantment, there were times of intense cawing from a mob of crows. It was loud. While the windows were locked to block the cold, they certainly couldn’t block this. The kind of incessant bickering and boisterous behavior that crows are famous for. I heard the loud noises not once, but maybe 3 or 4 times, I can’t remember exactly. But one of those times, the murder of crows was making their raucous from right around that same pine tree where all this story takes place.

Had the crows not been making such a fuss, I don’t think I would have ever picked up my binoculars on that cold day. It just felt like something I should do. And in hindsight, it was one of the best things I ever did. I took a chance, not expecting much. And it was absolutely magic. 

Closing Reflection
I think often about how it all began — not with the owl, but with the crows. Their noise, their persistence, their insistence that something was worth noticing. I could have dismissed it as a racket, but instead it became an invitation.

So much of what I’ve learned from my garden comes that way — through small disturbances that pull me from routine into awareness. The crows were the messengers, the owl the revelation, and I was simply the witness lucky enough to be paying attention.

Maybe that’s what the crows knew all along. That wonder is happening under our nose; it simply waits for us to look for it.