February 2, 2010
Got Rodents?
Winter is dark and dead. NOT REALLY!

Despite darkness and cold, wildlife survival strategies are playing out. Now when I venture forth in the dark of the foreshortened days of winter, I hear owls! Great horned owls! I can hear two now! Calling - one higher pitched. Steady, paced, and timely responses to one another. Back and forth…courtship in the heart of winter! Ah ha!

Once again, I am reassured by nature that all is well in the world. I remember that these rapacious birds must mate, nest, and lay eggs now - in the cold dead of winter - or all will be out of sync in creation. If only I could hear the mice, voles and pocket gophers that the owls hear now - moving and scurrying under the snow at ground level. In the rapture of their own tiny, mid-winter, rodent mating season.

Owls must mate now, while the din of vole love is loud and lusty pocket gophers are vulnerable to being nibbled at the base of a wind swept pine tree bole. Nest now, because when the month of May comes and the melting snow reveals more bare ground each night, the young owlets will demand dozens of tiny heads to bite and the hundreds of young and inexperienced vermin will be plentiful enough to catch and regurgitate for the owlets. In the absence of this abundant feast of Rodentia, the young owlets would resort to eating one another! So timing, as always, is everything.

Everything is playing out just right tonight. Once again: “Whoo-Who-Whoo, Whooo Whoooo (the male)”–“Whoo-Who-Whoo, Whooo Whoooo (the female).” And so it goes on a winter’s night. I wonder if I can find their nest site next week after work? The eggs in March? Then, watch the chicks grow in April to become awkward, fuzzy “brancher-chicks” in May, perched out when they get too big to fit in a nest together?

“And so it goes, and so it goes, and soon will you too, I suppose.” their rhythmic hoots say to me. - Tom Segerstrom
photo credit: Pamela Renner