A Surprise Resident

A neighborhood deer drinking from the tiny pond with nibbled hostas behind her.

A Surprise Resident
By Annette Bartlett-Golden

In a few short weeks I have seen more kinds of wildlife in the garden than any time before. There are recurrent visits by the neighborhood deer who come at least three times a day to drink from the pond, nibble tasty leaves and eat the fallen apples, often walking nonchalantly down the street as they make their rounds. Of course there are the feathered regulars: songbirds whose melodious voices fill the garden; crows that noisily convene on the neighbor’s roof; and red-tailed hawks that stealthily carry off young rodents on silent wings.  

Along with the numerous gray squirrels and the chipmunks I see daily now, there is a rabbit that frequents the place.  I’m happy to see her because there haven’t been rabbits here for a long while. She had a nest of young on the ground near the studio window which I discovered when I witnessed a hawk carry away two of the kits. After that I put a bucket with an opening cut out over the last plump kit in the nest. Some weeks have passed since then and I see him evenings in the field across the way.  ​

 A mother rabbit near her nest which I covered to protect her remaining kit inside from hawks.

The most surprising discovery of late, though, is the realization that we have a resident owl roosting in the trees of our garden. The large bird with brown and white striped wings and tail that I saw flying about during the day was not a hawk, as I had first thought, but was actually a barred owl, also known as a hoot owl.  Looking out of a window one morning I caught a glimpse of movement in the trees beyond. A rather large, stocky bird had flown to a nearby tree limb. Intrigued, I went to another window for a better look and I was both surprised and delighted to see an owl roosting in a tree above the driveway, its huge dark brown eyes looking in my direction. 

For the space of an hour or so I watched the owl: from its perch in the tree the owl sat alertly scanning the ground below for possible creatures to catch, often swiveling its head in various directions and making a bobbing motion; then it would fly to another perch and search again for something to catch. I was able to get a great view of the owl and its movements through the lens of my camera and you can be sure I took a great many photos and even a video of this fascinating creature.

Our resident barred owl perched atop the old play fort.

While I had often heard the tell-tale call of a barred owl in the garden and the nearby woods, it never occurred to me that an owl might actually be living here. Since then I have learned that barred owls make their distinctive syncopated calls, sounding something like “Who, who are you?”, to guard their territory from others of their kind. Native to eastern North America, and particularly plentiful here in the southeast, barred owls also live in southern Canada, the northwest of the United States and a small region of Mexico. Attracted by our little woodland pond, a forest of big deciduous trees, and a plentiful variety of prey such as frogs, chipmunks, songbirds and other small animals, this owl has everything barred owls could want. As most barred owls live in the same area their entire lives, I look forward to more armchair owl watching!
 
~If you are located in North America and have a similar environment, it’s possible you may have a barred owl too. You can learn more about barred owls at: https://allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/overview