Stone Dog, Birthday Owl

I have so many favorite things at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, but I have to put the stone dogs at the top of my list. 

I couldn't remember having seen this fantastic monument, this faithful marble fella. Hodge said, "You've seen this one!" but I'm not sure I had. My memory is becoming such that I'm having delightful new experiences all the time. It's much more fun not to remember that kind of stuff. Then it's all new again!

Hey puppy, why the long face? Why the stony look?

Well, I miss my master and I have a feeling he's not coming back. But I've kept watch here for oh, 70 years, and I'll be watching another 200 or so.

Your strong marble paws, so eloquent. And there's a random lion's foot behind them, too.

On the side of the monument, Dad's coming home from a trip. Mom's been holding down the fort. Maybe he's bringing a little sled full of toys. Baby looks kind of like he was copied from a Renaissance painting of Christ, like a miniaturized person. Head's too small in relation to the body. The toddler is better proportioned. Daddy! Daddy! Did you bring me toys?

And on the other side, the grieving widow is receiving his ashes, Hodge speculates. Too soon he left them, aged 31. Even the mastiff outlived him. The turquoise blue bleeding off the bronze (or copper?) frames is so beautiful. Like the colors you see shooting through icebergs. 

For a story about this monument that was not a product of my fevered imagination, please see

 this link, kindly supplied by Jessica Bussman of Friends of Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Turns out it's kind of a monument to express package delivery. Probably not ashes. :)

Spectacular hydrangeas. I love the hydrangeas here.

Phoebs finds a person with her exact birthday! That's some little monument, like a birdhouse for a spirit. A spirit-cote.

We walk on to The Dell, where Hodge rarely fails to find a great horned owl. We hear titmice scolding and scolding, and know there must be one near. But we can't find it. Three of the best sets of eyes I know, then mine. I'm of little help here. Finally Hodge says, "Oh! There he is!"

He is?? Wha wha wha?? Where?

He IS!!

Hodge finds so many owls on her peregrinations around Fresh Pond and Mt. Auburn that she doesn't really get how rare it is for we mere mortals to see any owl at all. She seemed surprised by our reaction. 

"You guys are birders. I figure you see them all the time. Don't you?" Um, no. No no no. We birders still freak out on the vanishingly rare occasions that we see an owl. You, my dear, are remarkable.

***Follow Hodge on Instagram @khmacomber***

I am traveling light; I didn't bring my big rig. I snap these pitiful photos of a pine tree with an indistinct growth in its armpit. They're the best I can do. The iPhone 6 camera is a miracle of engineering and capability, but it is not a camera for distant wildlife.

As I'm cussing and fussing, Corey grabs Phoebe's iPhone, and using his knee as a stabilizer, holds it up to one eyepiece of his BINOCULARS

(don't miss Phoebe's proud expression)

and without any fanfare whatsoever produces THIS

iPhone DigiBino'ed Image by Corey Husic

which makes Hodge's day, my day, Phoebe's day and perhaps his. Hard to tell with such a self-effacing young man. This would be remarkable enough, but Corey is the Last Living Person On Earth to Not Own a Cellphone. The Harvard Crimson even interviewed him about it. 

So he grabs a random iPhone, makes a tripod out of his lanky body, and produces this image. And we all have something good to remember that beautiful owl by. The lens flare at the bottom just adds to the magic, I think. 

For the next ten minutes, I tried valiantly and failed to produce anything usable. Then the owl turned and hopped into deeper cover. He was done with us and our yakkin'. 

iPhone DigiBino'ed Image by Corey Husic

Phoebe's comment: "He can do ANYTHING." I'm inclined to agree.

photo by Corey Husic

He took this photo, too, which pretty much sums up the perfect birthday in the perfect place: Mount Auburn Cemetery. Sweet Auburn! home to magnificent trees, flowers, sculpture, coywolves, wild turkeys, foxes, sparrows, warblers, wrens, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, the all-seeing, all-noticing Hodge and OWLS. 

Thank you, MAC, thank you Corey, Phoebe, and Hodge, for spending the perfect day with me.

Great Horned Owls of Mt. Auburn

New York has its famous red-tailed hawks Pale Male and, until recently, Lola.

Cambridge, Mass has a celebrity raptor pair, too. Last winter, a pair of great horned owls took up residence in a spiny locust (?) tree near The Dell in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

The nest was so tiny, flimsy and low to the ground that anyone walking by could clearly see the two owlets trying to grow up there. 

Photographers would stand directly beneath the nest, causing the owls a bit of anxiety. Finally, cemetery management put yellow crime scene tape up around the nest tree, something they'd been reluctant to do for fear of alerting even more people to the owls' presence.

A cellphone photo of a post-breeding bird by Kris H. Macomber, who was not one of the personal territory violators. This owl just happened to be sitting very low and very close last week.

Here is the nest tree; the nest is a small aggregation of sticks on the first horizontal limb to the right. For an owl, that's a very low nest.

To make a long story short, despite having to learn to perch at a tender age thanks to their lousy little nest, both owlets fledged successfully and have delighted scores of visitors, including me.

On our first mid-November visit, one was sitting, somewhat obscured, near the Dell.

On our second visit, Kris' eagle eye spotted one on the far side of the Dell. It's the upright blip on the lowest branch on the right side of the bare oak, right above the notch at 12:00 in the golden weeping beech tree.

Pretty cool, huh?

Another view, and this time you can see the owl right above the notch in the dark green yews. That's a big bird, to be visible at that distance.

Of course, we walked closer, and found him looking stoic.

He needed to be a cool customer, because a young Cooper's hawk had discovered him and decided to spend his morning pinwheeling around and cakking at the poor owl.

The Dell. Of all the spots in Mt. Auburn, The Dell is probably most representative of how the forest must have looked before it all went to ornamental rhododendrons and viburnums and Chinese tallow trees and Japanese maples. Little wonder the owls chose it.

 Not far from the Dell, a faithful dog sleeps, hoping to meet his person in Heaven. Yes, I stroked his cold head.

And Oliver Wendell Holmes (the poet and father of the super-famous judge) rests with his wife.

And beneath the owls' favorite tree, a watercolorist rests. Hodge brought him mussels from the Maine coast. She's thoughtful that way. Somebody else brought the periwinkle and the fir cone. It's a thing, like the roses on Poe's grave. 

I knelt and soaked it all in, hoping some painterly genius might osmose through my palms.

Today, I am thankful for Mt. Auburn Cemetery, for giant trees and beautiful gravestones in the leaf-lit dells, for willing owls, dear friends and for my wonderful family. Peace to you on Thanksgiving.