The short-eared owls aren’t yet rare, but we still stand breathless waiting for them to fly moth-like as they hunt at sundown. We listen for their raspy barks in flight, watch for them to land on a post, rootwad, or elderberry stem, then their heads to wither us with the piercing owl stare. I know they are reliable here at the Welts-Samish restoration area, overwintering before returning to northern breeding grounds.
On a cold, sunny afternoon, we are all here chasing nature: the duck hunters, the bird watchers, people taking kids for a walk, wildlife photographers, and me.
It dawns on me that nature used to chase us, and if we were chasing nature, it was just to get a meal. Now, we chase what’s left of nature just for the experience. Big game hunters spend tens of thousands of dollars on multi-day journeys to go on safari far away. People fly to remote Churchill, Manitoba to view polar bears from the safety of lodges and snow buggies. Big Year birders look plain crazy to me, burning fossil fuels to tear around the world just to sight as many bird species as possible in a sort of manic stamp-collecting competition.
But I’m just as guilty of leaving a trail of carbon as I chase nature: flying to Costa Rica and driving from the Cloud Forest where the vanishing resplendent quetzal lives to the Osa Pensinsula to find the engandered Baird’s tapir. I will be flying to Whitehorse in the Yukon to see the Northern Lights. I’ve driven several times to Montana to hike and camp where grizzlies and bison roam. This year, I took three flights on my first trip to the barren and beautiful Canadian Arctic.
I’d rather walk out the back door and see nature, so I’m doing as much restoration as I can. A long-eared owl stopped by for a couple weeks in 2012. Shorties stop by my property every year in the fall, but they never stay. This fall, one landed in my pasture to snatch up a rodent, and did fly-overs for about a week. I was hopeful for a winter resident, but it eventually flew away. The hoots of great horned owls and screeches of barn owls in our fields at night don’t bode well for the long-eared owls and shorties.
Long-eared owl at my house; attention posture
Highly nomadic and migratory, short-eared look for open grasslands where ground shelter is decent and rodent hunting is good. Samish Flats makes good overwintering ground for a number of raptors even with duck hunters lurking in blinds around the area.
I’ll keep working on my habitat so I don’t have to wander far to see owls. I’ll not put up farm lights that pollute the night sky with glare and make it impossible to see blood moons and northern lights on the rare occasions we see them. But I’ll still have to get on a plane to visit polar bears and tapirs, and will have to road trip to see bison and grizzlies, long gone from most Western landscapes. Like everyone else in this changing world, I will chase nature.
My fuzzy picture of the September 27 blood moon, from my pasture
Silver Snag Studio 