It’s deep winter, and nighttime birding is good. Leafless trees reveal owls against the sky. Snow cover lights up the woods, especially when there’s a moon.
While walking with my dog and looking in the treeline for owls I thought of a warm night last summer when I tried something completely different.
I rowed to the center of a small lake, dropped anchor, lay back on a canvas pack, and looked up. I was hoping to see owls fly over. Meanwhile, stars made a great show. There were coyote yips in the woods. It felt good to float.
I didn’t hear bird sounds, of course, and wondered why we don’t have Nightingales here. In Europe and Asia these birds are said to sing at night. Starlings were brought to America in the 1890s by some guy who wanted us to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare. Wonder why he didn’t bring Nightingales. Maybe Shakespeare never wrote about them, but that seems unlikely.
While thinking about this, something passed over me, very low, blocking starlight. An owl? Then another. And another. The feel of a swarm. Not owls. Too big to be insects. Flapping black wings, utterly silent. Zip. Over my face, and gone. Bats.
I figured it was time to leave. I rowed, thinking: I’m not afraid, but let’s move it. Bats can carry rabies. I rowed well. That was my one time out on the lake at night, lying flat in a boat. It had been nice while it lasted, owl-watching until bats came.
I thought of that as I walked in the freezing January night, looking for owls against the sky. I have nothing against bats. But I liked that they were hibernating somewhere, and that there were no bugs either, and that I could see my breath in the cold, and my dog’s breath.
If there were owls in the trees we’d probably spot them, I figured. And we did. We saw three. Two were Great Horned with ear-like tufts and hawk-shaped bodies. And there was a pale one that flew off with wide flat wings and no noise. A Barn Owl, probably. It’s deep winter and nighttime birding is good.
Nice little piece. Where do bats hibernate in this neck of the woods anyway? Speaking of the great outdoors an old high school buddy just sent pictures of a coyote that was hit by a car going 75 mph and the driver thought the animal was dead and kept driving. 600 miles later they found the coyote stuck in their bumper alive and well! I’ve got photos! PS: On a fishing trip to Canada years ago, sunset would bring out bats by the thousands. They fed freely on the mosquitos that hummed around our boat. The mosquitos swarmed around us and the bats swarmed around the feast of mosquitos. Of course, we were covered with toxic mosquito repellent which probably , like in the 80’s flick ‘The Fly’ , will turn us into giant versions of Jeff Goldblum if he had been turned into a human/mosquito.