The Snow-Owl's Drift

So I ask again: Is it asking too much of the human imagination to think that a snowy owl that experiences pain on flying knows it’s in deep trouble? If the answer to that is no, then this: Is it not possible for an owl in trouble to deliberately make its way to a place where humans couldn’t fail to find it, and wait for help? If the anecdotes cited in my last post are to be believed, this kind of self-awareness is within the mental capacity of a turkey vulture and a cottontail rabbit. If a scavenger and a “lowly” herbivore like a rabbit can make the connection, what about an apex predator, which relies on cunning and innovation to catch its prey?

When I think about it in this outside-the-envelope way, so much suddenly makes sense. This owl, which had formerly shown a predilection for sitting on highway signs, now stays huddled on the ground. It can still fly well enough to get to the top of a tree or building, but on the ground it stays. It sits still when people gather nearby. I was told that people were trying to get close enough to pet it, and that, a couple of days after it appeared at the mall, two men approached it with a blanket and a box in an attempt to capture it. They were stopped by the manager of a nearby restaurant, who was suspicious of their intentions. It leaves at night to hunt, but spends its days in this most unlikely ditch, enduring the attention of hundreds of people, a crowd that grows with each passing day. Was the owl waiting for someone to notice that its wing was out of place; that it flew with difficulty? So many people told me, again and again, "When it flew, it flew fine! It looked strong!" I didn't see that. I saw a bird in distress. 

And this is where it gets really interesting. I photographed the owl all Monday afternoon, Dec. 18, until dark. In between shooting, I tried to keep people away from it, with varying success. Most complied, but some ignored my entreaties, in the quest for the perfect cellphone photo of the “tame” Harry Potter owl. I left the mall dispirited and completely exhausted, too tired to even upload my photos. But I woke at 6 the next morning and dove into it like a creature possessed. I wrote from 7 to 4, not stopping for lunch. I wrote a post about the owl, about the stress put on it by the ever-growing crowds; about its mysterious injury. I didn’t know then that it had been hit by a car, but I knew it was badly compromised, and I sensed it was going to die unless I did something. I posted “The Parkersburg Snowy Owl” on my blog around 4:30 pm Dec. 19. The post went crazily viral, with more than 44,000 views in less than two weeks. And the spinning wheels, a bunch of concerned people  fighting a mostly losing battle for public consideration for this bird, got traction and started rolling.

Several more days passed while a concerned group of people, including State Ornithologist Rich Bailey, Rebecca Young from USFWS, Katie and Jesse Fallon from the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, raptor biologist Vince Slabe, Bill Thompson III from Bird Watcher’s Digest, Jon Benedetti of Mountwood Bird Club, bird bander Joey Herron and I all quietly conferred about how best to help the bird. We knew it should be trapped and taken into care. We had to keep the plan quiet, anticipating that trapping the bird in a public place would be difficult enough without a bunch of people gathering around. The owl showed up at the mall each day, and crowds only grew. Finally, December 21 arrived. We’d all agreed to converge at the mall at 10 AM to attempt to trap the bird and take it into care. Two local police officers were invited for crowd control. As I was loading the car that morning, I got text messages from Katie Fallon of ACCA, and an email from Jon Benedetti, who had been watching over the owl and educating the crowd at the mall since Dec. 14. Jon was at the mall, but the owl was nowhere to be found.

I was befuddled. How far could it go with that injured wing? And where would it have gone? Only a few minutes later, Katie texted again. Local birders Kyle Carlsen and Mollee Brown had located the owl about ¾ mi. from the mall, atop a building just behind Faith Baptist Church on 10^th St. in Vienna. What luck! When Jesse and Vince arrived there around 8:30, the owl was gone, but it turned up on a telephone pole a few blocks away, gleaming bright white in the winter sun. We trained our binoculars and scopes on it, wanting to give it space so that Vince could set his bow net and possibly capture it. And we who had been following this bird with such hope and determination were heartsick to see its right wing hanging straight down from its side, fully extended.

The owl sat there in the bright sun for a long time: 6 ½ hours, to be exact, while we watched and waited. It never moved from the telephone pole. People drove up, snapped photos, and drove away. It was hard to miss; you could see it shining white from Grand Central Avenue. I moved closer and parked several hundred feet away to observe and photograph the bird from my car window. All day long, it never once tucked the injured wing up. It would twitch the wing as if thinking about drawing it into a normal position, but never did. The longer I watched it and thought about it, the more I wondered about why, on this day of all days, the owl had quit the mall. Why it chose to perch atop a telephone pole on a quiet back street. Why it stayed there for so long with its injured wing fully extended.

I wondered if the owl had gotten the message from us that things had changed; that it was about to be captured. This message could not have come in spoken word; rather it would have come in the mind pictures we who were most closely involved with it may have inadvertently sent it. That animals think in pictures, and likely convey information to each other through a kind of pictorial telepathy, is likely. One has only to read Temple Grandin’s writing (Thinking in Pictures is a favorite book) to know this. One has only to live with an animal or bird to know this. 

I could bring Chet Baker yawning and stretching out of a sound sleep in another room by visualizing a fun run with him. In a far freakier feat, I once brought him slinking back from chasing cattle with a mind-picture I didn't even mean to send. As a crazy pup, he'd ducked under a barbed-wire fence and run straight into a herd of cows with spring calves. I had run after him, calling his name, until I couldn’t run any farther. He was having so much fun nipping the heels of the cattle that he’d ignored my screams.  In despair, I sank to the ground, and a picture flooded my mind of his dear little round head, kicked in.  And even as a heedless pup, Chet couldn’t ignore that horrific image that made its way from my vivid mind to his. And he stopped what he was doing, ran back to me and crawled into my lap.

My macaw always seemed to know when I was about to clip her toenails, a procedure she detested, well before I fetched the towel and clippers. She’d begin to tremble and move away from me. It was the darndest thing-- as if she was reading my mind. Well, she was! I became convinced she was able to see the pictures in my mind as I planned my strategy to corner her. Toward the end of her 23-year life, I would pay her the courtesy of announcing it to her, to save us both the trouble of her waddling and flapping away in dread. “Charlie, as you know, I’m going to have to clip your nails today. I’m sorry. I know you hate this.” She’d step onto my hand, allow me to walk with her to the linen closet, grab a towel and spread it on the floor. I’d then lay her down gently on her back and swaddle her in the cloth without a squawk of protest. We had reached an understanding. Charlie didn’t like being surprised by a sudden mind-picture, but was amenable to being asked nicely to cooperate. We both knew, after 23 years, the nail clip was going to happen whether she fought it or not.

If this is what people call “animal whispering,” all right. I don’t use the term. I don't use "furbabies," either. Animals are other nations, in harmony with us if we take the time and make ourselves still enough to receive their thoughts, their hopes, the pictures in their minds.  I believe that we communicate wordlessly with animals, and they with us, all the time, but most of us aren’t “woke” enough to acknowledge that it’s happening.

So here’s the owl, and let’s let our skepticism go long enough to consider that it has been reporting to the crowded mall every day for eight days in hope that someone will be able to help it. The way a turkey vulture hopes. The way a cottontail hopes. 

Hoping, in a way most of us can’t even grant it the intelligence and presence of mind to do. And nobody seems to get it. Nothing happens. It goes on trying to hunt at night, starving and getting weaker by the day. And that wing hurts. 

 So the owl knows that plan isn’t working and it’s not stupid, nor is it crazy. It’s not going to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. On the ninth day it gives up. It quits the crowded mall and struggles to the top of a telephone pole in a quiet neighborhood. And it lets its hurt wing hang straight down there in the bright winter sun. Even the least observant person walking by might say, “Hmm. Look at that big white owl there. I wonder why its wing is hanging down like that?” I think about that 6 ½ hours of pole sitting differently, having entertained the possibility that the owl knows it’s injured and might be seeking help. I wonder if it’s a silent advertisement, a protest of sorts. Here I am. My wing is hurt. Anyone picking up on that?

Photo by Joey Herron, Dec. 21, 2017

And the owl looks down and there’s a gerbil wiggling around in the grass. An easy mark. It stares at it off and on for six hours, and finally takes the suggestion we’ve made that it come to us for help. I’m not going to imagine the owl knew there was a trap set for it and had to decide whether or not to take the bait. But I do wonder if it got our mind pictures of checking it out, feeding it while its coracoid heals; pictures of it spending time in rehab and then flying back free to the Arctic? 

Photo by Bruce Wunderlich of the Holmes Co. OH owl, Dec. 2017

Did it get the transmissions we were all unconsciously sending it? Maybe my head’s gone soft. Or maybe something really special was passed between a young snowy owl and the hopeful humans gathered on 10^th Street, behind the Faith Baptist Church, on the Winter Solstice.

Photo by Michael Schramm, USFWS

I simply cannot dismiss the possibility that the owl came to the Grand Central Mall, weird place of all weird places for an Arctic owl to appear, to get help. I believe that sitting on the ground at a crowded mall with your  wing crumpled and hanging down wasn’t as dumb a move as all the humans thought. I rather think that we’re the dumb ones, for taking eight days to figure out what the owl was trying to tell us. On the ninth day, he rested, up atop a telephone pole for all to see. And on December 21, as the longest night of the year came on, we finally got the snow owl’s drift.

As a storyteller, I like the way this ends. However. I know you are dying to hear some fresh news on the owl. Hey, me too! Katie Fallon (author of Vulture and Cerulean Blues, and my owl information connection, has been doing a writing residency and has been away from home, hearth, kids, husband and owl. She checked in this afternoon with this update!

 January 7, 2018, 1:30 pm. Jesse and Katie Fallon report that the owl weighed a (low-end but normal) 1500 gm before his meal today. The coracoid fracture has healed. His shoulder is stable. He's done with his antibiotics and is off pain medications. Still on an antifungal, just to protect against infection. Jesse has moved him to a larger enclosure today so he can exercise at long last. The owl feels strong!

Blubbering? Me, too. Thank you for following his story, thank you for caring, and thank you for remembering the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia in your generosity.  And don't forget Project SNOWstorm, which is shining a great light on the hidden lives of snowy owls. Each individual is precious, and has so much to teach us, if we will only listen.

A bigger enclosure? Show it to me! Also:  Put me down. And lunch. Now.

Conversation with a Kestrel

You will doubtless remember the red-winged blackbird, singing out his song in backlit water vapor, that so electrified me in this post.

Bryan Holliday made that image.  Here, he's pictured with a storm-tossed wedge-rumped storm petrel in Mesa, Arizona. I do love a good animal selfie!

photo by Muriel Neddermeyer

I've had the pleasure of corresponding with and finally meeting Bryan when my friend Shila and I traveled to Sedona, Arizona, this past July. As I'd figured, he's a gem, and so is his wonderful girlfriend Kim. Though I'd hoped to do a little birding/hiking/hanging out with Bryan, he was all wrapped up in first-day-of-school preparations for his job as an elementary school science teacher, and I was all wrapped up in Sedona Hummingbird Festival stuff. So Shila, Kim, Bryan and I shared a meal in Phoenix and got to know each other a bit, which of course only made us wish we didn't live so very far away. I asked him if he'd send me another photo story for the blog, and here it is!

I love this image of an American kestrel, hanging out on a weathered fencepost. Several things about this image grab me. First, I never knew that the kestrel's little rufous beanie stood up above the heavenly slate-blue brow amd crown feathers. Too dang much. Second, the hearts running in perfect staggery lines down his flank.  They couldn't be polka dots. They had to be perfect, fat little hearts. Third, the kestrel's look of peace and relaxation. No stress, no fear-sleeked feathers here. He's not about to flee; he's just looking back at Bryan, answering the clicks of the shutter with calm composure. This is a bird who's been approached slowly, with respect, who's been politely asked to stay for a little while and has been given the space to grant that request.

Please, click on the photo so you can see the detail I'm referring to. It's a beaut!!

Here's Bryan's story behind this remarkable photo.

After the red-winged blackbird photo titled “Morning Breath” was awarded First Prize in the Birds category of the National Wildlife Federation annual photo contest, I decided to submit it to a few others.  In the spring of 2009, the image caught the attention of Scott Bourne and the Aperture Nature Photography Workshops.  I was chosen as a finalist for the Emerging Photographer of the Year award and invited to Yellowstone National Park for a four day photo adventure, sponsored by Apple and their Aperture Nature Photography Workshops.  Our group consisted of four professionals and us four chosen amateurs.  We spent mornings and evenings shooting, with lunch and workshops during the afternoon to learn Aperture, which was Apple’s software to rival Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.  

We all had the greatest time traveling, photographing, and getting to know one another.  We all had different photographic styles and interests, challenging each other to look at everything through fresh eyes.  I was the only bird photographer of the amateurs, sharing this passion with Scott Bourne.  Since I was in a new place with a big lens, I had birds on the mind more than anything.  It was early April, so most of the birds were the residents.  We mostly saw black-billed magpies, common ravens, and Canada geese.  Then I began seeing American kestrels.  They were doing their hovering along the roadsides, looking for prey, and perching on the fence posts bordering the ranch lands.  I kept asking our drivers to stop so I could attempt to photograph one, but every time we did the bird flew away.  If you’ve ever tried to photograph a kestrel, you know what I mean.  They would look so beautiful sitting or hovering there, only to fly away as soon as we slowed down.  After two and half days of this, I was frustrated.  As was everyone else since they were sick of stopping!  It became a running joke.  I kept saying that I just needed to find the one bird that was willing to have his photo taken.  

On the third evening, we all set out to photograph the sunset at some gorgeous spot in the mountains.  But the heavy clouds made me think it would probably be a bust.  Luckily, we drove in multiple cars, because there were more kestrels along the way!  The others were done with this kestrel stuff and went on to the sunset spot.  I was determined to find my bird.  The clouds got even heavier gray.  We kept trolling along, a bird here and a bird there.  Then I spied a beautiful male kestrel on a cool wooden post, his colors rich in the overcast light.  We slowed down and crept toward him along the gravel road.  He stayed put.  I rolled down the window and put my big lens on the door frame, ready for a chance.  We crept even closer.  The bird still stayed.  I took a couple shots and he just sat there!  After confirming my exposure, I said “We’re going for gold”.  For the next few minutes the driver followed my explicit directions to move the car, an inch this way, a couple feet that way, turn left 15 degrees, forward a few more inches, until we were practically sideways in the ditch.  I kept shooting, enjoying the chance to fine-tune the perspective of the bird and the background, which are both equally important for the success of the shot.  Everyone in the car was so into it, they got out the recording equipment and began filming me photographing the bird.  It then turned into an interview for Apple, asking me questions about what I was doing and how I was feeling about the situation, all while I was trying to shoot!  And the bird stayed put!!  

It was a crazy hectic few minutes, which came to an end when the other cars from our group came driving back and flushed the kestrel.  They said the sunset shoot was no good and wondered how we did and why we never made it up there.  We just smiled and laughed and showed them the back of my camera.  Cheers and high fives all around!  

ZICK HERE:    This image delights me for many reasons. First, it was hard-won, the result of several days of trying. Second, although they were in Yellowstone National Park, stuffed with charismatic megafauna like grizzlies and elk, Bryan was holding to his modest bird-seeking goal, to the point of being the butt of everyone else's jokes. But as we saw with Morning Breath, holding to his goal is how he gets the best shots. And in holding to his goal, I believe, he's keeping a vision in his mind of what he's after. And here I'd submit that perhaps that vision in Bryan's mind was powerful enough to have been transmitted and received by the kestrel.

What if the kestrel got a picture from Bryan of himself sitting perfectly still and decided to do just that? Crazy, maybe, but who's to say that didn't happen here? Animals and birds don't think in words; they think in pictures. And I've had enough experiences of my own, with Chet Baker and other wild things, to tell me that they can send pictures to us, and receive them as well.  I've found that mind-pictures send particularly well when my mind is clear of all other clutter; when I'm focused completely on my vision. I'm pretty sure, looking at his work, that Bryan focuses down to a laser point. At that point, if my experience is any judge, he's likely to be transmitting messages to his subjects, whether he means to or not. It's fashionable to call someone who sends and receives messages from animals a "whisperer." However it's done, it's clear to me that something metaphysical passes between those who understand animals, and the creatures they work with.

A little hint in his own words: "I kept saying that I just needed to find the one bird that was willing to have his photo taken." One he could get close enough to connect with, perhaps.  

If you're intrigued by this notion, read Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin. And her pivotal book, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. Temple Grandin is well-known for giving us a picture of autism from the inside, from one whose mind works differently, and, where interpreting animal behavior is concerned, better than most people's. This is a book I should re-read every few years, to stay in better touch with the creatures I'm privileged to live with, and to better understand my fellow humans who have been grazed, touched, or subsumed by autism.

If you’re interested in purchasing this image, please contact Bryan Holliday for the details to make it happen.  He can be reached at bryanhollidayatgmaildotcom. (I've scrambled it to foil the spambots; just substitute a period for the dot, and an @ for the and, and off you go!)

More of Bryan’s work can be seen on his website at www.bryanholliday.com.

In the Company of Ravens

So I'm hiking up out of Red Rock Crossing Park, back up to Slick Rock and the Secret Slick Rock Trail, the one that got me in this fix in the first place, because I could not resist its name, or the promise it held of finding something secret, something special. The turkey vulture has given me several close passes and some of his invisible, totemic wisdom. And then two ravens hove into view.

 

I could tell they were young birds first by their voices. I haven’t been around breeding ravens in my lifetime, having lived out of their range, but this spring in the New River Gorge area of West Virginia, I heard what had to be a young raven yelling for its parents in the mist. It was a high-pitched, bleating whoop, an adenoidal shadow of the mellow toots and deep honks the bird would make later in life.

These were yelling. A lot. They took an immediate interest in me, circling just overhead, dangling their legs, talking talking talking.

 

Well. I thought perhaps that this is something ravens do in Sedona, that they don’t do elsewhere. I wondered if people hand feed them. I still wonder that. I wonder about everything I saw in Sedona. Whatever made the ravens come and seek me out, I was bursting with joy at the simple fact that they did. “Waugh! Waugh!” they called again and again, as they circled and played in the updraft over Slick Rock.

I spoke softly to them, then louder, as it became clear they were not afraid of me in the least. I remembered lying down on a clifftop at Cape St. Mary’s in Newfoundland, maybe 33 years ago, on a fine, cool, foggy, drizzly summer day, wondering what the ravens would do if I feigned death.  I got my answer through slitted eyes as they quartered lower and lower. Finally I heard the soft plop of a raven landing on the turf just a few feet behind my head. I got an instant, primal image of that hefty black beak plunging into my eye socket and sat up flailing, a human windmill. I was doing that GET ‘EM OFF ME ROSIE thing Humphrey Bogart did in “African Queen” when he dove down to fix the prop on their leaky old boat and came up covered in great fat leeches.  Shudder!

I never knew the raven’s true intent in landing behind my head, but I wasn’t going to risk an eye by letting him show me. Why else would he land there? Curiosity, certainly. But maybe because he thought I was dead, and tasty too.

This was an altogether different thing. The energy coming off these young ravens was playful, benign, almost doglike. They wanted to see what I was up to. They wanted to know if I had anything for them. They wanted to play with me.  I was laughing at their antics, as one kept ducking his head between his dangling legs in flight.  It reminded me of a kid riding a bike hands-free, just trying to impress whomever might be watching.

I began to make a game of trying to photograph the two against good backdrops, and, as I do with all my animal and bird subjects, I talked them through it. “Ahh. Red rock. Goood. Nice one. Let’s try that again!”

“You are BEAUTIFUL! Well, after a good molt you’ll be even more beautiful. But what a start you’ve made!”

I could see the pink corners on their mouths that told me they were youngun’s. That, the dull brown matte juvenile plumage, and their high teenage voices were the tipoffs. I wondered if adult ravens would behave this way. I never got the feeling they’d been hand-raised; no, they were truly wild, just unafraid, bold. 

“This is nice, but do you think you could fly over by Cathedral Rock for me? You’d look so good against that backdrop!”

To my amazement, they turned and beat their way over to the Rock, circling against it. I don’t think they spoke English. I think they picked up on the picture I had in my head, on the pure electric communication passing between our minds. I was visualizing a picture of them against the Rock, and I think they saw it in their heads. I also believe they were enjoying my enthusiastic reaction to their antics. I think it perfectly possible that they knew I was photographing them, and wanted to put on a good show for the camera. Ravens don’t miss much. Their eyesight, the things ravens must notice, put us humans to shame, make us look like we’re moving through life with our eyes closed.

 The ravens returned from Cathedral Rock and flew at eye level and what felt like arm's length, back and forth in front of me. By now, they certainly knew I had no food for them. I barely had enough water for me. But I was headed for my car, and all would be well.

Finally they landed.

Their shadows on the rock--were they enjoying them as much as I was?

All of it. The communication we shared, the simple but obvious joy in each other's presence. 

Their finding me was like coming upon someone in the middle of nowhere, and saying Hello! Hello! How's it going? Where are you from? You'd never do that in the grocery store. But out here, meeting someone is special.

 I felt I was in the presence of someone, perhaps people I knew, in raven form. The birds' interest in me was too intense, too friendly, too joyful to be anything other than directed. By whom, I could not know. I might guess, but I'd never know.

All I knew is that I felt accompanied. 

Entertained. Loved, even.

Not alone.

If that be your only message, ravens, it was received with joy and great humility. 

What an honor this was, to be for a little while in the company of ravens.