Rio Grande Reflections 2020: Owlspotting

Some of you might remember the movie "Trainspotting". This acclaimed, very dark comedy features the grim lives of a couple of Scottish heroin addicts. The title rather cryptically refers to the hobby of trainspotting, in which participants collect meticulous information about passing trains - not something these addicts are doing. The Oxford Dictionary indicates the term "trainspotter" is often derogatory, referring to any "person who obsessively studies the minutiae of any minority interest or specialized hobby".

This latter definition can certainly be applied to many birders, and in this case, to our recent fascination with observing the procreative cycle of a pair of great horned owls that took up residence on our acequia. We heard them hooting outside our bedroom at dawn and dusk back in January, when life outside was mostly dormant. We began seeing a pair of owls in February, often calling to each other from a short distance apart. One of our fellow dog walkers mentioned that he had seen them exploring a couple of the nests built by a pair of Cooper's hawks that we have watched for many years. Horned owls, by the way, do not typically build a nest, rather preferring to appropriate the labor of other birds.

This single, casually shared observation from a passerby focused our attention and resulted in a cascade of neighborhood experiences - study, detection, photography, conversation, and delight. The female owl helpfully chose the nest easiest to observe from the path along the acequia. We first observed her sitting on it February 11, long before the cottonwood leaves began to appear. She remained, brooding stoically through cold, wind, snow, and occasional bombing runs by the much-aggrieved Cooper's hawk pair. We observed, Ed photographed, I made obsessive notes (I am a wildlife biologist, after all), and as we encountered more and more neighbors walking, word began spreading about the blessed event likely to come.

With slowly warming temperatures and the shelter in place order by our Governor, foot and bicycle traffic on the acequia path grew dramatically. And like a benign virus, word and interest in the owls also advanced. Approximately a month after we first saw the female sitting, she appeared on the edge of the nest, indicating the eggs had hatched. It was nearly another month before we saw the first downy head peering over the edge of the nest. After that, neighborhood excitement truly went viral, and everyone was watching. But more importantly, everyone was talking to each other (from a safe distance of course).

We met neighbors whose homes we had walked past for years without knowing the occupants' names. We met folks from other neighborhoods who were doing more walking or riding in the neighborhood because their schools and offices were closed, or because they had learned about the owls from some other local source. We helped children learn to use binoculars. We talked. We shared our observations and our delight in this gift from the owls, and we delighted in getting to know each other.

As the young owls have grown from comical big-eyed mounds of white cotton in the nest, to the quasi-adult flyers they now are, they have become harder to spot. But they are nearby, with the adults keeping watch and homeschooling their kids in the ways of owls. As the stores and restaurants have slowly opened to partial business, human traffic on the owl path has declined. The many tragedies and injustices of the larger world continue unabated. Some have recently been horrifically thrust in our faces, beckoning us to act. But the gifts of nature and neighbors are also always there to restore us. The gift of this virus is learning to notice. Learning to notice the gifts of what, and whom, is always around us, if we take the time.