Hey everyone,
I wanted to share with you a little piece of exciting news. Flying Cloud has an owl!
Over the last few years we’ve heard a variety of late-night bird calls from some critter just south of the clearing usually sounding loosely like “who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” For those of you with a birding interest, you’ll recognize that as the mnemonic for the call of the Barred Owl (Strix varia).
A few weeks ago we heard the owl making a single “whooo” call as we were circling up before bed. A few days later, after our final Friendship Fire of first half, I was walking up to the Food Shelter when a white form lifted off the ground in front of me. The owl flew silently and landed just a few feet away on one of the stone towers marking our main trail. It sat for a few minutes as I and a few other staff watched it, and then flew off into the night. I was thrilled by this little encounter, but I didn’t know what was to come….
A few nights later two more staff encountered the owl, and then one evening we had to call “emergency pumps”. Sometimes if we’ve been using a lot of water, we’ll run out in the afternoon or evening, and we’ll blow a conch and yell “emergency pumps” at which point everyone runs up the hill to the pump and does fifty as fast as they can.
On this night we were all sprinting up there when people started yelling “stop! Stop!” We did, and a staff member pointed out the Barred Owl where it was sitting on the branch of a beech tree maybe thirty feet away. Everyone that night got to see it, and we all watched in awe as it hop/waddled around on the branch before gracefully taking flight into the oncoming darkness. Wow!
Surprising but true, a few days after that, the owl was spotted again. This time, an intrepid staffer with a camera went chasing after it with a small group of campers. After a few minutes of pursuing it from tree to tree, the owl settled down a bit and they were able to sneak in close. Through careful attention to the environment around us, and a little dedication, Forest Flame was able to snap this lovely photo:
(Click for full size.)
So called for the stripes on its chest, the Barred Owl is a relatively common nighttime visitor in New England. One important factoid about them is that they will reuse the same nest site year after year. That probably means that the owl we’ve been seeing this summer is the same one we’ve always heard up at FC, it’s just getting bold!
After this critter we’re all looking forward to more cool nature sightings and I’ll let you know when they happen!
