The Owl Outside Our Window

(I wrote this piece for a fascinating class called Writing Nature—team taught by a science professor and a professor of nonfiction writing.)

The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds had nothing to offer by way of explaining our extraordinary visitor. I have always thought of the book as authoritative, but in this case it had the story all wrong. Lyrically wrong, for a field guide, but wrong just the same. “This owl is seen only by those who seek it out in its dark retreat,” it said, “usually a thick grove of trees in lowland forest. There it rests quietly during the day, coming out at night to feed on rodents, birds, frogs, and crayfish. If disturbed, it will fly easily from one grove of trees to another.”

So how to explain this exception of a barred owl? My wife first noticed it in broad daylight one day last February, looking in through our dining room picture window as Brenda looked out. Apparently it had never read the Audubon guide. There it sat, not fifty feet away, motionless, impassive, its eyes meeting Brenda’s as it perched on the limb of a tree overlooking our backyard. The two had made the first of what would be many such connections. The owl became a recurring presence in our yard, in our lives, for many days to come.

Brenda called it “him” or “he,” while I called it “her” or “she,” revealing a gender bias on both our parts that had no basis in observation. Sometimes it stayed for hours, even as we came and went, the garage door rattling up as we headed out on a dump run and rattling down when we returned. And yet the owl’s visits remained so novel that each emergence never ceased to thrill.

I should explain that we live in a house on the edge of the woods in a small, rural town in central New Hampshire. Our yard is bounded by a low, semi-circular stone wall; beyond it, the ground drops into a hollow that in turn is bounded on the far side by a seasonal creek that empties into wetlands. Beyond that, the ground rises again, steeply this time, forming the flank of a long hillside. It’s all but invisible through the green thickness of summer foliage, but it looms like a white wall when covered with snow in winter—as it was on this particular day, and for many weeks before and after. A short walk into these woods brings us into a setting so still that we can hear snow fall.

We are accustomed to encounters with wildlife in our yard and along its margins. In summer, wild turkeys pause, ever alert, ever mindful of their trailing young, as they lift their heads to tug ripe berries from the bramble. In fall, chipmunks skitter over and through the stone wall with acorns in their cheeks. In winter, chickadees chitter from the bushes as they contemplate another lilting flight to our feeder. One afternoon just a week ago, Brenda spotted three coyotes trotting in single file along that looming hillside, following a game trail we’ve seen deer take before. Aside from feeding the birds when it’s cold, we have typically shifted from observing wildlife to participating with it only at unhappy moments related to our garden: when one, two—no wait, three!—skunks denned beneath the garage workshop, just a short commute from the compost; when plump tomato hornworms the size of my thumb threatened to strip the plants that Brenda holds most dear; when a mysterious mound of dirt turned out on closer inspection to be a porcupine dining on beets. That visitor I confronted with care, bristle on bristle, nudging it with a push broom held at full arms’ length until it huffed off into the woods. One morning over coffee last year, Brenda and I watched for what seemed an eternity as a snapping turtle plodded through a gap in the stone wall toward the overgrown flower bed alongside our house. There it bulldozed its way through the tangle of weeds and the day lilies, presumably searching for a good spot to lay its eggs. It found none—perhaps because its slow-motion reconnaissance drew Brenda and me from the house, united by interest but divided over whether this would be a welcome development.

But the barred owl’s appearance was an altogether different experience. Different in the regularity of its visits. Different in its composure, watching us as we watched back. Most creatures—mosquitoes and deer flies aside—react to us as a threat, vanishing into the woods as soon as we make ourselves known. But not this owl. We had plenty of time to contemplate each other. It was an impressive bird—about twenty inches tall, with a wingspan twice as wide as the bird was tall. Its whitish-grey feathers were marked by distinct brown bars, which explains the name. Its head was a study of rounds within rounds: a softball-shaped head, with concentric feather circles surrounding its dark marble eyes. As with all owls, those big eyes and its stately presence lent it the appearance of wisdom. It seemed to study us. Its deliberate movements projected calm. It grew easy to think of it as our feathered angel, looking after us lest we succumb to late-winter despair. 

With time I came to realize that the owl was far more desperate than we were. Soon enough, and then day after day, the owl grew bolder, swooping down to a perch atop the birdfeeder pole just ten feet outside the dining room window. From there it watched us as we moved from dining room to kitchen and back. From there it sat as if holding a pose while Brenda edged closer and closer to the window with her phone and its camera in hand, hardly daring to breathe. From there, when opportunity presented itself, it revealed its true purpose—its desperation—by shifting its gaze to the birdseed scattered in the snow below. The snow cover last winter was unusual: a thin, icy underlayer topped by several inches of light powder. That combination provided protection for mice or voles as they tunneled atop the snow crust to the birdseed without revealing themselves to predators above. Or so they thought.

Twice Brenda or I happened to be watching as the owl tensed with concentration, opened its wings, and dropped feet first into the snow, flexing its talons as it probed for prey. It didn’t have to see a rodent to hunt it; it could hear it. With its catch grasped in a clenched foot, the owl lifted itself gracefully from the snow and returned to the branches to eat.

Perhaps the owl had grown comfortable with our presence; presumably it had concluded we were no threat. I would like to think it was curious about us, and our side of the window, just as we were about the owl and its life in the woods beyond the glass. But then I wonder how curious I would be about an owl watching me if I were forced into the woods with my Swiss army knife to fend off starvation. Perhaps the owl remembers us, if only for the emergency food supply we offer, and might return in the shivery weeks to come. We can only hope so. But that decision—along with the unrelenting challenge of survival, which animates the life that abounds around us, and which drew our persistent visitor from its “dark retreat”—is the owl’s alone to consider.

(What now? You can jump to the top of this page, go back to the My Stories index—or read the next story!)