A Rare Visit From a Northern Neighbor

  • The Great Gray Owl is a rare sighting south of the U.S.-Canadian border. (Photo by Matt Victoria, Camillus, NY. www.fickity.net)

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food, thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec, even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it
happened:

Transcript

The Great Gray Owl usually lives deep in the northern forests of Canada. But due to scarce food,
thousands of the big owls have drifted south. They’ve drifted into southern Ontario and Quebec,
even crossing the border into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Last month, a Great Gray
was spotted in New York, the first one documented there in almost a decade. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein was there when it happened:


Ornithologist Gerry Smith had invited me to see some of the best raptor habitat in northern New
York. We took off in his cluttered Saturn wagon.


“Here we go!…” (sound of engine turning on)


Gerry wears a beat up canvas hat, green sweatshirt, and always has one hand on his binoculars.
He started birdwatching when he was 13 as a sort of therapy.


“My father passed away when I was 15, but he was terminally ill, and I needed an escape, you
know, obviously as a 13 year-old kid I didn’t know that, but I got hooked, and the rest, as they
say, is history.”


More than 40 years later, he’s never had a job not related to birds. And he’s in his element
cruising the back roads of Upstate New York.


These farm fields are near the St. Lawrence River. They’re ideal for hawks and owls. They’re
grassy with occasional tree stands. And they don’t get as much snow as other parts of the state.
So birds can snag the mice and voles they live on all winter long.


In no time, Gerry’s spotting raptors. There’s a hawk perched in a twisted elm…


“Yep, it’s a Red-tailed Hawk and I think it’s got prey because it’s bending down like it’s eating.”


A rough-legged hawk soars above us, black and white plumage glowing in the sun.


“The bird was just lofting along.”


A Short-eared Owl glides past a farmhouse.


“Look how that is flying. It’s flying like a big fruit bat. Cutting left across the hay bales, coming
toward the house, above the house now, and drifting left.”


Smith’s also seen a snowy owl this year. But still no sign of the Great Gray owl.


The Great Gray usually lives in the far northern forests of Canada. But this year it has flown
south to the upper Great Lakes region by the thousands. Conservation biologist Jim Duncan is a
Great Gray Owl expert with the province of Manitoba. He says the phenomenon happens
cyclically, when the Great Gray’s main food source – the meadow vole – becomes scarce.


“It’s a regular migration. It’s like a robin migrating in response to food availability, except in the
case of the Great Gray Owl, it’s a longer period of time. It’s three to five years.”


Gerry Smith’s still waiting for the Great Gray in New York. It’s been spotted just across the St.
Lawrence River in Canada.


“There’s a single Great Gray Owl on Amherst Island, but not one, as far as we know, has made it
into northern New York despite the fact that a whole lot of us have been looking.”


Now, I know you’re going to call that easy foreshadowing. But believe it or not, just an hour
later, Gerry pulls the car over, grabs his binoculars, and peers at something big perched on a tree.


“We have the first Great Gray Owl that’s made it across the border. I’ll be a son of a gun. That is
so…Now I’m very enthusiastic. Hey, I’m gonna set up my scope.”


While Gerry unpacks the telescope, a raven flies to a branch just above the owl and tries to scare
it away. Birders call it “mobbing.”


“Now don’t you mob that owl, you fiend. I think that’s what he’s thinking of doing. Watch this.”


The owl holds its ground, and Gerry gets it in the telescope’s sights.


“That is so cool. It’s not facing us, it’s back is to us, but take a look, that shape is very
distinctive.”


It’s slate gray with some brown and white, round head, stocky body, as big or bigger than the
raven.


“This has been…oh, the owl just hooted. It’s a very low guttural hoot, something like a horned
owl, only deeper.”


Just then, the owl’s finally had enough. It takes flight and drifts slow and low to a stand of trees,
likely its roost. Gerry jots down the GPS coordinates and we get back in the car.


“Well, sir, we’ll finish the route and head back, but we have had undoubtedly the high point of
the day. That’s the high point of my winter.”


This Great Gray Owl migration is the biggest on record. Biologist Jim Duncan says it’s a chance
for all eager birders to help science.


“People have a real opportunity to contribute to our knowledge of the species, be they farmers,
housewives, commuters. They don’t have to be scientists.”


You do have to be respectful, though, if you want to report Great Gray sightings to wildlife
officials. Stay off private land, don’t make noise, and keep your distance. And enjoy a rare
opportunity to see a Great Gray visitor from the North.


For the GLRC, I’m David Sommerstein.

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Birdwalking With Ornithologist David Allen Sibley

All a birdwatcher needs, really, is a patch of the outdoors – or a window – and something to sit on. Patience and binoculars help. But there are certain skills that earn serious birders treasured sightings of rare or shy species, and a deeper understanding of bird behavior. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Martha Foley got an early morning lesson in the best practices from ornithologist and artist David Allen Sibley, author of the new series of Sibley bird books from the Audubon Society:

Transcript

All a birdwatcher needs, really, is a patch of the outdoors – or a window —
and something to sit on. Patience and binoculars help. But there ARE certain
skills that earn SERIOUS birders treasured sitings of rare or shy species, and
a deeper understanding of bird behavior. The Great lakes Radio
Consortium’s Martha Foley got an early morning lesson in the best practices
from ornithologist and artist David Allen Sibley, author of the new series of
Sibley bird books from the Audubon Society.


It’s a warm, sunny fall morning – fragrant and dewy. Cicadas tick and trill.
We’re walking along a nature trail in northern New York State – destination,
a new wildlife viewing platform on the verge between some woods and a
marsh. On our way, of course, David Sibley is looking up:


“Let’s take another look at those chickadees; they’re sounding more interesting.”


It’s a good time of year for birding, fall migrants are passing through. And
we’ve come to a good place – the trail takes us from deep woods to a bright,
sandy area that’s growing up to berries and birches. It looks like heavy
equipment was through here not long ago. Not pretty, but good for birders.


“It’s kind of ironic that birdwatchers end up going to all the disturbed habitats and
open fields and even garbage dumps, and then avoid the thousands of acres of
unbroken forest which is so important to the birds, but not much visited by
birdwatchers.”


Sibley’s Audubon bird books – five so far – exemplify a new generation of
field guides. They push past identification towards art. The illustrations are
highly skilled, detailed and lush, fitting inheritors of the Audubon name.
Sibley works from sketches made in the field, checking details against
photographs, specimens, and a lifetime of mental images. Now in his forties,
Sibley started drawing birds when he was five, says drawing and looking
gone together ever since:


“I don’t do art so much for art’s sake but for information. I do the sketches and
illustrations of birds to record details, to record information about them so that I can
remember it and pass it along to other people. So I’m able to draw other things but
unless I have some sort of information I want to record about it, it doesn’t hold the
same appeal.”


We’re in the woods again. Sunlight filters through a high canopy of maple,
cherry and hemlock. The group is strung out as we pick our way through the
underbrush. Walking is a little hairy, with uneven ground underfoot, and
our eyes on the treetops. But before long, we’re at the marsh, climbing the
viewing platform. Sibley sets up his scope, but most of the time, we’re just
looking around.


“There’s a blue jay in that half dead treetop in the distance.”


Sibley quotes Yogi Berra in his “Birding Basics” book – “you can observe a
lot just by watching” – but this is a practiced way of watching.


“Well things like that blue jay, I heard it before I saw it, but I think that one of the big
things, one of the big skills in birdwatching is watching for movement and seeing the
difference between a bird moving and a leaf falling. And also you get a sense of
where to look. Not necessarily where the birds are mostly likely to be, but where
you’re likely to see one. There’s not much point of looking through the deep shady
woods, because even if a bird is moving in there, you’re not likely to see it. But if you
scan the treetops and the edges and the open sky you have a good chance of seeing a
bird in one of these treetops.”


A sharp chip means a swamp sparrow somewhere. Sibley tries the universal
call, but it won’t show itself.


“You never know, it might have climbed up onto t twig somewhere and just be sitting
there in the sun looking at us right now.” (laughs)


“Bird watching takes a lot of time.”


“Yeah it’s a big commitment.” (laughs)


“Are we being too noisy?”


“No. Birds don’t mind noise that much. They’re much more sensitive to movement.
One of the worst things you can do is point at a bird. If you see a bird and say, ‘Oh,
look at that!’ and point, it will almost invariably take off and fly away or duck down
under cover. But if you don’t move you can shout, and say, ‘Look over here!'”


Most of the group getting this impromptu lesson have put in some serious
time with their own binoculars and field guides. There’s a friendly, but
ongoing competition of sitings and stories, and a sense that we should be
able to show Sibley something unusual – but we don’t. Neither do we cover
a lot of ground. From the marsh it’s a quick walk back to the parking lot. It
is, how it is – a simple success.


In the sense that we got outdoors early in the morning and we saw a bunch of birds
that was a very successful birdwalk. A birdwalk is really a birdwatch more than a
walk. And I tend to go very slowly when I’m birdwatching.


For the Great Lakes radio Consortium, I’m Martha Foley.

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