A Tale of Two Owls. Part 1: Newton

I wanted to make this post sooner, but it took me a little while to clean up the sound recording enough to make a good post. These adventures that I am relating are from earlier this winter.

One Friday I decided to head home early from work and thought I might try to use the last rays of sunlight to make my way through Houghton Gardens and Hammond Pond. That morning had already been quite successful finding many of the regulars on pond but also found a ruddy duck, which is quite a treat for Hammond Pond. Up on the ledges of the Webster Conservation lands the trees were just dripping with goldfinches quite an amazing site. So on my way home, I was just hoping again for a productive walk. But I arrived latter than I was expecting and dusk was in full progress as I reached Houghton Gardens.

A Great Horned Owl

I just entered the gate and had a few blurry glimpses of sparrows when this faint low hoot came to my ears. "Who's awake. Me Too." I snapped to attention. A Great Horned Owl! I looked up in the the tall pines and sure enough a large bird was sitting at the very top of the tree, almost like a star or angel on top of a Christmas Tree. The light was quite dim, but through my binoculars I could make out the large ear tufts and the white "bib" on the throat that firmly marked this red-tailed hawk sized bird as the great horned owl. I held as still as possible as he continued to announce his presence. I have seen and heard a great horned owl once before, but never with such "good" light. I was struck by how close this owl was and yet its low hoots seemed to be coming from a great distance away, a trick of the low pitch of his calls.

As I continued to marvel at this large owl floating on top of his tree, a second hoot answered the first  and a second owl came silently winging into the Gardens from the direction of Hammond Pond. They were duetting! The audio clip in the movie is actually of the two owls duetting, the male has a slightly deeper voice than his mate. In the midst of the coldest part of our winter these Great Horned Owls were already paired! I later learned that these owls start pairing off in late fall and breed in January/February. So even as I was missing the birdsongs of warmer months, in the heart of Newton's Winter, I found these owls to help to fill in the gap.

The first set of hoots is of a single owl, while the subsequent hoots both owls are duetting.