Owl Prowl
Posted in Around the Garden on December 1 2011, by Debbie Becker
Debbie Becker leads a free bird walk at the Garden every saturday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., beginning at the Reflecting Pool at the Leon Levy Visitor Center.
Winter brings many different things to New York City, but for a birder, the one special gift winter delivers is the owl. With the leaves off the trees, these cryptic, wise, and almost magical birds become easier to locate and observe. The New York Botanical Garden hosted a number of species this past year, including the Barred, two Saw-whet, two Long-eared and two Great Horned Owls. As a matter of fact, there were more owls in the Garden than in Pelham Bay Park, which has always been considered the area’s owl hub.
Birders on the NYBG’s Saturday morning bird walks are now hopeful these mystical creatures will return and grace us with their alluring presence.
Reports of the Barred Owl from last year tugged at our heart strings, though we began to believe he was a figment of someone’s imagination because sightings were few and far between. Remarkably, the elusive character was never really observed by any of the birders in our group, but mostly by Garden staff. He was first spotted behind the Conservatory and then in the Rock Garden. Without a sure place to catch sight of him, the Saturday morning birders exhausted themselves trudging through drifts of snow to seek out this beautiful and somber owl. We hope he will return this year so we can all get the glimpse we’ve been waiting for.
Two Saw-whet Owls arrived in November last year and stayed almost five months, drawing birders from near and far to gaze upon their sweet faces. Happily roosting in the Rock Garden, one of the pair remained high and elusive, while the other owl embedded himself in the yews and could only be viewed when the wind blew the branches apart. A New York Times reporter accompanied me on my bird walk one winter day and I had the opportunity to show her his roost, but sadly the winds were not stirring. Thankfully, the following week a photographer from The New York Times tagged along on a separate (and very windy) walk, and we were able to obtain striking pictures of the little owl.
The Long-eared Owls were quite a surprise as they perched very low in a shrub along the wall of the Rock Garden. If you were lucky, you got to see them up close and personal, a rarity as these owls are very hard to locate and have a knack for blending into their surroundings. They remained in the Garden for about a month, safely roosting high in the conifers.
Our resident Great Horned Owls stay with us all year long and mate in late December. We have had such fun watching them nest, but their usual nesting spot–a dead, hollowed-out tree–fell down during a storm, so we will have to wait and see where they try to rebuild. The pair had a brood of three owlets, and it was fun to watch them mature from gray puff balls to the large, ominous raptors that they’ve become.
Requested every Saturday during the NYBG’s bird walks, Owl Prowls are both fun and challenging. The search can be exhausting, but the reward of seeing one of these nocturnal creatures in its roost is simply breathtaking.
Photos by Debbie Becker.
