Oil on Panel - 4 x 4 inches
Just before the arrival of spring in 2018, American Crows were creating a ruckus outside of my window while I was eating breakfast. Never one to miss an opportunity to explore the reason why crows are in a tizzy, the commotion led me to observe this Great Gray Owl perched in a tree just feet away from my house. It stayed low in the branches and slowly moved southbound from tree to tree.
By the time I got dressed for the outdoors, the owl was perched across the road in a dense thicket, well hidden. The crows had moved on by then. The silence of the winter’s morning, except for a passerby or two, left me alone with this beautiful owl, and I was able to snap some decent photographs. My yard has its share of voles, one of this bird’s favorite food. Vole tunnels abound and are especially visible after the first snowfall of the season, as long as it’s a light snowfall. One or two inches of snow will oftentimes display dozens of criss-crossing, irregular patterns that are most prevalent beneath my bird feeders and cedar trees.
Four interactions with voles are memorable. One time, there was one in my house, first detected by droppings noticeably larger than a mouse’s. It had been eating from our cat’s bowl. Second was witnessing a Northern Shrike capture one beneath the snow in our front yard. The third was finding a vole’s nest in the ground while mowing the lawn. After seeing an odd, circle-shaped patch of dead grass about the size of a softball, I bent down to take a closer look. After flicking the spot with my finger, I discovered the grass was removable, like an unsecured toupee. When I removed it, there was a perfectly cupped, shallow home in the ground about the size of a breakfast bowl. The young voles scurried away to escape danger. I didn’t mow in that area for weeks. The last memorable vole interaction, which I didn’t think was possible, was hearing a vole munching on bird seed beneath the snow.
Hearing is an essential part of survival in the wild, and Great Gray Owls rely on their hearing to find voles underneath feet of snow. Their large facial disks aid in detecting lower-pitched sounds more than any other owl, and this in turn, helps them hear voles under thick snowpacks. Great Gray Owls also demonstrate hovering to reduce acoustic mirage – the bending of sound traveling through snow – in order to pinpoint their prey’s precise location.
Another interesting characteristic about these birds is that their comb-like serrations (the longest of all the owls in the world) located on the edges of their wings, help them to fly almost silently. They require open habitat to hunt voles, pocket gophers, or other small rodents located next to mature forests for nesting.
I hope you are all doing well and have been enjoying the fall weather in your neck of the woods. The miniature show at Strathmore opens soon on Nov. 23rd, so if you’re in the Washington D.C./Baltimore area, I hope you get a chance to visit. Showing oil paintings of Saw-whet Owls. Your support is welcome.
Stay wild, my friends.
References
Cunningham, V. (2022, March 9). Who’s there? Star Tribune, E1, E8.
Duncan, J.R. (2013). The complete book of North American owls. Thunder Bay Press.
Heisman, R. (2024, Winter). Hunting by Hearing. Living Bird, 43(1), 24-29.
Von Herff, W. (2023, July). Frontiers in ornithology. Remarkable new discoveries about how raptors hunt their prey. Birding, 55(4), 22-23.
