Bubo, the Great Horned Owl (American Woodland Tales) Read online

  Beyond the woodlot he rode into a brisk current of air that was moving southward. He sailed on this for many minutes, bumping and dropping with it as the heat and contours of the land twisted and churned it.

  A mile farther the wind current died away. He was left heavy and slow in the air. He saw a tall hickory standing beside a country road and winged toward it. In its limbs he found a secure perch and he stopped to survey his route. His head swayed and his eyes widened as they focused on the light in a nearby barn, the road beneath him, and the massive woodlot to the south. Bubo felt a quickened pace in the wind, lifted himself into the air, and flew on.

  As he flew, he turned his head from side to side to watch the scenes below. Headlights of automobiles marked the roadways. In the distance he could see the lights from small towns and hear the din of their night activities. He circled away from them, seeking out the dark interiors of the square sections.

  A shining stream winding between dark fields arrested his attention, and he swooped down and alighted in a walnut tree that grew beside it. He folded his soft wings against his body, bobbed his head, and looked around. Suddenly he stretched his neck and opened his beak. The unused bones and fur of the mouse he had eaten earlier in the evening had formed into a pellet and were being cast. The pellet dropped to the ground and he wiped his beak on the limb of the walnut. His body had taken all the energy it could from the food, and in the manner of the birds of prey had returned what could not be used to the soil of the fields.

  Bubo stretched and began to wonder about the life around him. He felt fierce and independent. He lowered the disc of feathers above his eyes and peered through the night. He felt a need to call and sound out the area he was in. First, he palpated the buff feathers of his throat. They thumped grandly. Then he vibrated his windpipe in an effort to boom. Only the shrieking cry of a young horned owl came from his throat. The sound died into the night.

  However, it was heard. The great horned owl who owned this territory was hunting in the woodlot just across the field. He left immediately and flew toward the walnut. He saw Bubo sitting bold and erect in his hunting tree. Without warning he dived at the young owl, snapping his beak and swinging his talons. Bubo plunged from the branch and flapped hastily over the field. For half a mile the older owl pursued him. Bubo flew out of this territory and the other owl stopped the chase.

  Bubo went on. He kept flying southward. From time to time he perched, went through the motions of hunting, and then moved on. It was about three o’clock in the morning when he came to rest in a woods that encircled a small lake.

  The lake had been dug thousands of years ago by a pleistocene glacier that had moved over the land. It had pressed a block of ice into the earth at this spot. When the ice of the glacier had melted, the hole pressed into the earth left a small lake. To this spot these eons later came the young horned owl looking for a home.

  The trees around the lake were scrubby oaks and hickories. They were not the luxuriant beech and maple climax trees of the region, but the trees of poor soils or abandoned land.

  Bubo stopped his night flight at the edge of the water. He perched in the dense foliage of a red oak, and for a long time he waited and listened, prepared for an attack by the resident owl. Only the cicada called. He stood close to the trunk of the tree and closed his tired eyelids.

  A few hours later a cardinal chirped in the half-darkness and flew to a limb beneath him. Bubo did not hear his call. He was sleeping in deep weariness.

  Bubo was able to spend the autumn and winter in the quiet woods that encircled the lake. No owl came to drive him off. He found the hunting good and the shelter excellent. He used a limb of a crooked white pine for his winter roost. The limb was deep in the crown of the tree. A wall of dense needles surrounded him.

  When the first snow fell, Bubo watched it from his pine. It descended as silently as the flight of the owl. It lay like a roof on the needles above his head, and piled softly on the limb by his feet. It settled on the dome of his head where one left plumicorn was coming in. He shook the snow off. Around his large yellow eyes a fan of red-brown feathers circled outward. These were rimmed with a band of black feathers. Each eyelash was a tiny fernlike feather, and they made the cold yellow of his eyes seem warm and soulful. The patch at his throat was whitening for Bubo was maturing. The singular beauty of the great horned owl was already evident in the young Bubo. The feathers of his breast were a golden umber, and each was intricately striped with black. Beneath them hung the tawny feathers of his pantaloons, so soft and so deep as to be incredible. He was heavy now, weighing a good three pounds, a hundred times heavier than a chickadee.

  One January night Bubo heard a deep boom from the south. He listened. It was the first spring courtship of the birds—the call of the great horned owl. Bubo listened to the call coming across the lonely coldness of the land.

  The next night he heard the voice again. It came from the woods just south of the lake. Like a torn bell another owl boomed to the north of Bubo. There was silence to the south, and then Bubo saw the tremendous beating wings of the owl to the south as he came to the lake to see who had answered him.

  Bubo’s head turned slightly as he followed the flight of the bird from the south. He waited quietly, knowing that he would have to leave the lake land, for this forest belonged to the owl who had come to defend it. Bubo could see him clearly now for he was flying his way. Bubo thought he had been seen as the defender was swooping in toward him. The flying owl threw his wings up, broke his flight, and dropped silently on a limb not seven yards away from Bubo. Bubo did not enjoy the situation he was in; the defender was skilled and fierce and terribly aroused. His throat was pulsating in wrath.

  Bubo reacted. He left immediately. He dived down through the limbs of his pine and sped low over the wagon trail. The resident owl saw him plummeting away and plunged after him. He swept along the trail with incredible speed, but could not overtake the winging Bubo. Bubo was traveling for his life. His imminent knowledge of the forest avenues stood him in good stead. He banked and swerved around the trees without losing speed and was beating with full strokes across the meadow before the resident owl reached the edge of the woods. The resident owl stopped at the forest edge and boomed, while Bubo took advantage of the pause and climbed high into the night.

  He flew west, the voice of the owl of the lake sounding fainter and fainter as the noise of the shifting air currents around him filled his ears with their howls. Bubo came down over a dark patch of conifers some miles away. The Scotch pines had been planted on a hillside above a swamp. He skimmed the tops of the pines as he followed a furrow in the crown. He looked down and sighted an opening in the center of the plantation where trees had been blown down in a windstorm. Bubo alighted on one of the edge pines that had grown stout limbs into the clearing. He rested quietly.

  He had liked his lake forest, but was not ready to defend it. He was still a wandering bird. He had no mate, no breeding territory. His instincts to defend an area were not highly developed. However, Bubo was a strong personality. He had great power and potential ferocity. He would not be pushed into an area that would afford only a second-rate living for a horned owl. For the moment the pine plantation would meet his immediate needs. It was dense and gave him good shelter during the day, and was surrounded by old pastures where mice and voles abounded. But it was not an area in which he cared to spend his life.

  The next night a colony of long-eared owls who roosted in the plantation discovered the great horned owl. They looked very much like Bubo, but were grayer above and striped below, whereas Bubo was barred below. They did not have the white throat patch and were much smaller, about crow-sized. From their communal daytime roost in the pines, each night they spread many miles in all directions to hunt for mice.

  With Bubo in their pines they did not all return there to roost. Gradually most of the colony shifted to another roost in a plantation three miles to the north. Those that shifted tardily were exposed each evenin
g to Bubo’s attack, for they were active at the same time as Bubo and when Bubo found them he would strike. Finally only one owl remained in the pines—Bubo.

  Bubo spent the spring and summer in the Scotch pines. They served him as a roosting site by day; by night he wandered, drifting on this wind and that wind into new and strange forests. He learned the section of the country well; he knew the woodlots and the marshes, the fields and the human settlements. More and more, however, he was drawn to a vast forest to the southeast. Sometimes he would be gone for several nights and days exploring the edges of the ancient forest of tall beech and sugar-maple trees. Many wild creatures traveled its secret footpaths, numerous birds roosted in its saplings. A deer bedded down at the edge of the marsh within it. The old trees were filled with cavities and roosts. It was quiet. Bubo found it satisfying.

  One night, however, he heard the cry of young horned owls near the stream that ran through the old forest, and he knew the territory was occupied. He flew slowly back to his pine plantation. He could not enter the forest. It was forbidden territory, and Bubo respected the natural laws.

  In October, the hunting season opened. The little pine plantation looked like just the right cover for small game to every hunter who passed by. At times four or five hunters and their dogs were tramping among the trees. Bubo went unnoticed for the first week of the season. Then one day a party of four came through the clearing and Bubo flew from his tree. He winged up through the tops of the pines. The hunters had been watching for rabbits and pheasants on the ground, and did not see the owl until he was well away. Nevertheless, two of them trained their guns on him and fired. The hasty shots were poorly aimed. Many of the pellets were deflected by branches. A few zinged past Bubo. A stray shot snapped off a primary feather. The owl circled toward the far end of the plantation only to find another group of hunters. He banked, climbed high into the air, and soared swiftly away. When he took note of his course he found himself drifting toward the ancient forest. He did not change his direction.

  Not far from the forest a crow discovered him. It was Corvus. He flapped after the owl cawing frantically. From the field below two more crows saw him and joined the chase. Six others arose from a cornfield and came cawing through the air. When Bubo reached the edge of the forest, twenty crows were converging upon him. He hesitated to enter the forest. He stopped in the first big tree he came to. The crows massed in the top of the tree. They came closer as they grew bolder. Some found diving lanes and swooped along them toward the exposed owl. Bubo ducked as they passed over his head.

  Then Corvus made a courageous attack and spanked the owl with his wing. A great noise followed. It was this action that dared Bubo to think about shelter deeper in the forest. He peered through the trees. Far into the interior he saw the outline of a beech tree that still held its leaves among the bare maples. Corvus tried his brave attack again. Bubo saw him coming and did not wait for the insult. He flew into the beautiful forest, winged around the tall straight boles of the old trees, and swooped up into the shelter of the leafy beech. He found a stout perch and alighted. The crows followed him to the tree, but saw that they could not reach him and let the game drop. Corvus left reluctantly.

  Bubo slept for many hours. When he awoke night had come to the forest. He looked around with pleasure and some fear. Bubo knew he was in the ancient forest and that another horned owl lived here. For the first time, however, he felt that he would not leave without putting up a battle, for at last he had found a land that seemed to fit him.

  That night he took short flights from the beech tree as he cautiously explored the forest. He found that the south edge of the forest was margined with a broad thicket. Beyond it lay fields. As he returned to the beech, he passed the clearing in which the sugarhouse stood. The house was on a slope that rolled down to the swamp where Bubo had seen the deer. The swamp drained into the creek. The woodland around the stream was dense. The trees were young and vigorous. Bubo flew north on his next flight. He came to an abandoned meadow in which hawthorns and old apple trees grew. The meadow sloped down to a slough in the forest. Beyond this was a broad marshland that extended almost a mile. Bubo did not venture across the marsh. He turned and went back to the abandoned meadow to hunt for an hour or so. Then he flew through the proud old trees of the ancient forest and swooped into his beech.

  He arrived without sound. Above him a pair of yellow eyes, even larger than his own, watched him perch. A great horned owl studied him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BLACK TALON LOOKED through the brown leaves at Bubo. She watched him fold his wings to his body. She did not attack for she needed the new arrival. He had come to take the place of the mate she had lost earlier in the year. She had waited all summer and fall for Bubo to brave the barrier of the unknown and come into the forest. She had seen him on other nights nervously flying around the edge of her territory. One evening her young had frightened him away. She could not recall her own search for a home, but his fear of being attacked was somehow familiar. It was part of the growth of an owl. Tonight, however, he seemed determined and confident, as if an inner sense told him that there was a vacancy in the forest and he must fill it.

  Black Talon closed her eyes and dozed for a few minutes, relaxed in the knowledge that her forest was balanced again. Something had just been completed. The scheme of it did not penetrate her owl brain. Only her body knew that the cycle of nature was preparing for spring.

  She opened her eyes and without glancing at Bubo flew to the young elms that grew along the stream.

  The slight stir in the leaves above awakened Bubo. He dropped his wings in defense as he saw the big owl take off. His feathers raised from his body and his horns shot up. He studied the flying bird closely. There was something familiar about the form, the large plumicorns, the broad wingspread, the great head. In his mind of patterns and imprints he found the memory of a female horned owl. As he watched her wing through the tree limbs his fear left him. Nevertheless, he was on guard. Bubo did not know that her mate had been killed.

  There was no challenge that night or the next, and finally Bubo did not expect it.

  When the snows came to the forest Bubo was well established in the old woodland. He had come to know more than a thousand acres of forest, swamp, and field. He had discovered the richest hunting sites and best roosts. He had staked out favorite hunting trees: a beech in the forest to the north where he hunted mice, an ash stub in the marsh to the west where the pheasants roosted, the bleached skeleton of the tall elm that rose over the thicket to the east. Rabbits were abundant here. A dead limb in the maple by the sugarhouse gave him a view of life in the clearing.

  All during November, Bubo was keenly aware of Black Talon, but he did not approach her.

  Bubo came to know the smaller birds of the forest. Each evening he would awake before sundown and sit quietly in his leafy beech watching the twilight activities of the passerines. Parus would leave the clearing by the sugarhouse and dart to his night roost in the beech below. Bubo observed that Richmondena flew far down the fence line to sleep in the grapevine, and that Sitta, the white-breasted nuthatch, disappeared into the underside of a basswood stub. After Richmondena called his last chip and the forest was silent, Bubo preened his feathers and took his course through the trees to the stream bed.

  One night he watched Mephitis, the skunk, plug up his den entrance with leaves. He saw little of him after that. Nightly, he found Vison, the mink, scouting the stream bed, but Vison was crafty, and Bubo never saw him long enough to strike. Often he heard the voice of Vulpes, the red fox, calling from the field. His cold eerie voice carried far in the winter stillness.

  Bubo now belonged to the ancient forest. He was at home here, but so silent was his flight, so quiet his hunting, that few knew he was in the forest until it was too late.

  One fateful night in January, Bubo boomed. The creatures of the forest listened in dread; Parus bent his tail feathers against his cavity, Pipilo squatted lower on the raspb
erry stem, Richmondena listened from his grapevine thicket, Otus flew down the fence line, Felis snarled and jumped into the thicket, and the bold weasel found the rabbit frozen with fear under the stump. Bubo was back. Black Talon had a mate. The mature resonant hoot of the courting male owl shocked the woodland.

  Only one listener found it to be music.

  A half a mile away in the creek woodlot, Black Talon closed her feathers to her body and trembled at the beauty of the voice. She did not answer the call.

  In the cold winter forest, still rigid with snow and ice, Bubo and his mate were the first to respond to the stir of spring. So infinitesimal were the changes in the earth that only the most sensitive could feel them. The January land was no warmer. In fact, it was the coldest month of the year, but the light of the sun shone four more minutes each day. Bubo and Black Talon felt this lengthening day even while the snows fell and the land was locked in ice. Their bodies answered the coming of spring with the miraculous changes that were the beginning of new life. And with this inner stirring their interests and habits changed. For the first time in a year Black Talon flew to an old crow’s nest in the gnarled beech by the sugarhouse. The nest was flaked with snow. Black Talon stood on the rim and stared at the cold black sticks. She did not reason why she had come to the nest, nor did she stay long. She had instinctively answered a fleeting inner need that had been awakened by the call of Bubo and the sun.

  Bubo called to Black Talon again the next night. It was almost midnight. Parus shivered in his warm cavity. Vison walked closer to the overhanging roots of the stream bed. And Black Talon answered.

  “Whoo! WhooWhoo! Whoo! Whoo!”

  As the nights passed the booming of the owls became more and more frequent. Bubo called from his beech tree, Black Talon answered from her elm roost. Then Bubo called from the sugarhouse and Black Talon answered from the marsh. Finally their voices sounded as one near the old crooked beech with the crow’s nest.