One day in early autumn I was walking along a gravel road that led to the house where I lived in western Washington.  I was coming down the final hill to a place where a creek flowed under the street when I started hearing song sparrows alarming intently at something in the transition area. 

I had heard song sparrows alarm many times before but this was the first time in my bird language career when I noticed a distinctly syncopated rhythm to the alarm calls.  Hearing the multiple birds calling in this way created a strange acoustical effect that made it sound like they were both trying to talk over each other. 

It caught my attention and I was very curious to figure out what was happening.

As I moved in more closely I slowed down & started walking softly so that I wouldn't disturb whatever scene was taking place.  The feeling I got from the whole situation was an intense fear for safety coming from the sparrows.  It was as if that fear was coming through the sounds they were making. 

As I peered over the edge of the street I suddenly saw the source of their distress as a small bird about the size of a robin popped up to land on a vine maple. It looked me right in the eye and I could see it's hooked beak, large eyes and curious stare clearly in front of me.  It was a pygmy owl! 

The sparrows responded to the new location of the owl and adjusted their views to account for the zone of safety they had to maintain around it.  They seemed really worried...  I had seen pygmy owls before(even one in the midst of eating a varied thrush) but never with this much alarmed intensity around them.

What was it about this owl that had stirred up the sparrows so much? 
Was it hunting time?  Does this owl have a reputation along the creek?
Maybe the alarms had always been there and I just hadn't noticed them.

I watched as the pygmy owl flew down the creek & out of sight only to be chased by the sparrows.  It was cool to notice that I could hear the location of its new perch by following the movements of the sparrow alarms.

I listened for a couple more minutes and then the sounds started to die off.  The sparrows came back along the creek towards me and went back to their usual maintenance behaviors.

Realizing that the owl had flown off in the opposite direction I continued on my way and left the song sparrows in peace.

Earlier today I was sitting on the deck behind my house watching the birds at the feeder.  It was a beautiful, sunny September day and everything felt very peaceful.

I noticed a goldfinch attached to one of our feeders picking out seeds and eating them.  He had a chickadee friend who was hanging around too and it was really striking to notice the differences in how they feed.

While the goldfinch was almost completely still in place, the chickadee would bounce back & forth from the trees to the feeder.  It would grab a bit of food and then fly off for a few seconds, then it would come back.  It seemed to be constantly on the move and visiting all three feeders at different times while our goldfinch would just sit there feasting in one spot.

I watched them continue on in this way for about ten minutes.  They were joined briefly by another pair of chickadees that darted around in the same way as the first.

Then as if he had had enough to eat the goldfinch gave a call and flew away.

Not ten seconds later a starling came in to scope things out.  I wondered if he had been waiting in the bushes for the goldfinch to leave before making an appearance though I don't honestly know if that was the case.  It could have been a coincidnce but the timing was very suspicious.  I'll have to keep watching them.

The starling had a whole different pattern of feeding than the others.  He would fly up to one of the feeders & grab a chunk of food.  Then he would bring the food down to the ground again where it would be consumed. 

He didn't stick around very long though.  He only grabbed a few more mouthfuls & then flew off to a new location.  During this whole time the chickadee feeding was uninterrupted. 

It seems that even though the chickadees were constantly on the move, they were staying in one location a lot more than the others.  It's so interesting to think about what goes into determining the different feeding rhythms of songbirds. 

I'll let you know if I find out that the starlings have a grudge with the goldfinches.

In my last post Crazy Sounds from Barred Owls I told the story of how I discovered a Barred Owl was responsible for some strange noises that I had been hearing around my property.  Today I'll share the mind blowing events that unfolded in the week that followed...

I had finally discovered that the strange noise being made in the treetops was a juvenile barred owl.  It was so strange to see how different yet similar they are to adults.  I couldn't really tell any difference in the field markings but there was something about the way the owl looked that screamed "inexperienced animal."

It was really fun to watch how the birds responded to this predatory energy in the landscape. 

When I first saw it up in the oak tree, all the woodpeckers that feed in our backyard were alarming and circling up to watch the owl.  This was the first time I could ever truly confirm hairy woodpecker alarm calls and it was very instructive to learn about their behavior.  They didn’t so much make any different calls than they usually do but their alarm calls were more frequent than usual and they hopped up the trees to make a big circle around the owl.  Nuthatches were getting in on the alarms too.  At one point the owl swooped in after one of the woodpeckers but missed.  He seemed to accept defeat at that point because he flew off and the woodpeckers chilled out.

Over the next few days I saw the owl a few more times.  Usually for a good part of every day I could go out and hear alarms coming from various parts of the landscape.  It was obviously hanging out close by.

Then one evening I was sitting at my desk when at the window I caught some movement out of my eye and heard the thwap as a large wing hit my window!  I was certain it was the barred owl and rushed to look out.  It seemed to have pounced on something and then disappeared.  I ran outside and looked out into the fading light over the lawn and sitting on top of our bean trellis was the Barred Owl.

It looked at me briefly & then swooped down into the garden.  That’s when I heard the airy whistle sound again but it wasn’t coming from where I expected.  I looked up and sitting on our pea trellis was a second Owl.

I couldn’t believe it.  Now there were two of them.  The first one flew up to a low perch and the newly located owl pounced down onto the lawn.  I found a place to sit and watch.  They did this sequence of behavior over and over again.  Perching low for a bit and then diving down apparently attempting to catch something on the ground. 

So what were they hunting? Can you guess what it was?

I was in utter amazement of what I was seeing and as the light faded the cricket chorus was incredible.  The scene seemed like something out of a fantasy.  It’s not every day you get to watch the synchronized hunting patterns of two Juvenile Barred owls. It seemed too good to be true. 

But I still had this question of what the owls were hunting.  Why do they keep pouncing down like that?  Are they missing their target?  Maybe they’re hunting something that’s very abundant. 

I watched one dive down and then like a vacuum of silence where it had pounced the cricket chorus stopped and I suddenly realized what they were hunting.  The cricket larder was on and they were having a feast on my lawn.  What better way for Juvenile owls to hone their hunting skills than by practicing with large tasty insects that make a lot of noise?

As the last light waned from the sky I moved quietly back across the lawn trying to not disturb the crickets in their songs and slipped inside the house to leave the owls in their hunting.

This week I have a new story from the world of the barred owls.  I can't believe how much I've learned about them in the last week.  There has been a story emerging at the current place where I live that is showing me some really interesting facets of their lives that I've never been able to see before.  It's also given me new insights and caused me to reflect on the experiences I've had with barred owls in the past.  It adds a new layer of questions to the last story I shared about the lawnmower wake feeding.

This story starts off one early summer morning.  It was just a little before 6 in the morning when I headed outside to listen to the birds waking up.  As I got out the door it was still dark, but light was starting to appear on the horizon.  Everything was still quiet except I noticed one of the most bizarre sounds I have ever heard.  It sounded like a soft airy whistle rising in pitch and I had no idea what it was.  This was new to me.

My first thought was that it was some sort of Owl but I wasn't sure and also considered the possibility that it was some other sort of nocturnal bird or maybe an insect.  The sound wasn't very loud but it was very distinct & repeated over and over again. 

I went to sit down and continued listening.  As the birds started to wake up the sound changed locations and pretty soon had abandoned the landscape I was in.  It was clearly coming from in the tree canopy but I didn't get a chance to see what was making the sound so I had to settle for calling it a mystery.

A few days went by and I was out on the lawn one afternoon enjoying the sun when I noticed robin alarms coming from the trees a few houses down.  I listened and noticed that it sounded like the parabolic alarm that you would see around a nest robber, or a cat, or an owl.  I was leaning towards cat even though looking back on it now; the alarms probably had too much intensity to be a house-cat.  This was more like the response I would see towards a bobcat but we don’t have bobcats in this neighborhood. I noticed that the alarms would occasionally stop altogether but that if I kept my ear out for long enough it would start up again. There was definitely something going on but I didn't make the link to that sound I had heard the other morning.  Another mystery...  I wasn't sure if I'd be able to solve this one.

That evening however I was sitting outside eating dinner with my family when we heard the sound again.  It was very close and I recounted the story from the other morning and wondered if we could get a look at it.  Then suddenly my mom pointed up in one of the oaks and said, "There's a big bird up in that tree.  I think that’s what's making the sound."  I ran to get my binoculars and we confirmed that it was a barred owl.

But there was something off about this owl.  Something about it felt different than other barred owls I had seen in the past.  It looked a bit different from other barred owls I had seen & it’s behavior seemed a bit dopey for lack of a better word, plus it was making this strange noise. 

Did it have something to do with gender?
Time of year?
Maybe it was a juvenile...  I went to my computer and found a recording of the sound.  Sure enough... it's a juvenile.  That’s why it was acting so strangely and making that sound.

Another mystery solved... but that did not prepare me for what would happen over the next few days.  I'll post the next part of the story soon.

Last year I lived in Washington State on an old homestead property in the western foothills of the Cascade Mountains.  There was a lot of wilderness there.  It wasn't the end of the road but a quick walk down the street would leave you in a forest that was on the edge of a massive patch of land that went up the mountains and onward to the other side.  It was huge.  We had a good number of animals that would come by our house regularly including bobcats, cougars, coyotes, deer, and the occasional bear.  I had a lot of really cool encounters with wild animals but none more frequently than the Owls and in particular the barred owls. 

When I first moved in I noticed pretty quickly that their hoots were a common feature of our nighttime sound-scape.  At certain times of year I would be awakened by whole groups of them in close proximity to the house all calling to each other and causing a raucous.

I would hear bird alarms coming from particular trees during the daytime and often wondered if there was barred owl hiding out in the cedars or in amongst some dark spot.  I tried many times to go into those places and see them but I always met with failure.  Until one day something changed on the landscape that cause one barred owl to suddenly become very conspicuous and observable.

The house had a couple of grassy paddocks that had probably held sheep at one time and the front lawn had been left unmowed all summer so that all around the house and in the meadows there were tall grasses that had gone to seed and moving through there were deer trails, snakes, and tons of vole activity.  There was so much vole activity in these grasses that when I would sit at my sit spot in the pasture I could hear little movements and rustling all around me almost non stop some days. 

It was at this time when the grasses had almost completed their yearly cycle but well before they died off that my landlord decided to mow the lawn.  He left the grasses in the two paddocks but everything close to the house was cut to within a couple inches of the ground. 

In the following days after the grass was cut my housemates and I started having numerous close encounters with a Barred Owl that had suddenly taken up residence in our yard.  It was also at this time that I started noticing the Jays acting differently.  They seemed a lot more active on our property than they had been and robin alarms became a more regular feature around the house.  It didn't take me long to figure out that the shift in the bird behavior was linked to the barred owl and within a couple days I had figured out that I could easily find the location of the Owl on our property by following the alarms from the Jays, Robins, Chickadees, Sparrows, Towhees and Flickers. 

Sometimes it would sit on top of an old metal play swing that we had in the yard.  Other times it would hang out in the alders behind the house.  It was always close by and didn't seem too concerned that we were watching it from close range.

I started to wonder about this.  Why did this Owl suddenly change it's behavior and start sitting out the open?  This normally shy bird was being ultra conspicuous and it was a mystery to me. 

A couple weeks went by and the barred owl continued to stay close.  I would watch it hunt voles in the paddock and one day I saw it kill and eat a garter snake under the big leaf maple beside my sit spot.

Then just as soon as it had arrived, the owl seemed to abandon our yard.  The jays calmed down, and the alarms stopped happening in the pattern that had been like the norm for so many days.

I don't know for certain why that owl decided to stay so close for those couple weeks but I do see a pretty strong connection between the time when the lawn was mowed and when the owl showed up.  My theory is that the lawn mower displaced a lot of voles into a much more vulnerable position than they're used to.  It "blew their cover".  All the voles that had lost their homes moved in to unfamiliar crowded territory & it created an amazing vole Larder for owls. 

Whatever the reason, I'm really grateful to have gotten such a close time of connection with the barred owls & whenever I hear owls calling to each other in the night I always remember the one that stayed close to our house feeding off the fruits of our landlord's lawnmower.