Early in my birding habit, I was stopped by a fellow wanderer on the north shore of Lake Ontario.

“Have you seen the Snowy Owl? There’s supposed to be a Snowy Owl about.”

This was before I was aware that the eBird app, Facebook groups, and various email lists are regularly tipping off local twitchers to rare bird sightings near them, and generating a lot of interest and local movement when an infrequently seen bird comes by for a visit. How, I wondered, does this person know there’s been a Snowy Owl in this park? And, more importantly, where can I see a Snowy Owl?

The answer that day, as it remains today, is I have NOT seen the Snowy Owl… not any Snowy Owl, in fact. Despite living in two places that have fairly regular Snowy Owl sightings during the winter — Snowies are arctic hunters, and don’t dependably come this far south in numbers that make them predictable — I have yet to be so lucky.

In fact, it was starting to feel like I might never see any owls of any colour or size, as my relentless scanning of power poles, fenceposts and tangled limbs came up empty. The very first bird I tried to find in the practice of birding was a Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) reported at a conservation area on the Puget Sound when I was visiting my in-laws in Seattle-Tacoma. We trudged through a downpour that day and saw no owls. A baptism by rain into the fulfilling hopelessness of trying to connect with a creature that really doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Owls did make it onto my life list in 2023, but only by taunting me with their eerie calls in the darkness. I heard a couple of Barred Owls (Strix varia) outside a cabin we rented in northern Michigan, when we travelled for my niece Caroline’s wedding; and soon after a Long-Eared Owl called out to me on a pre-dawn stroll through my local birding park. There’s nothing quite as fruitless as standing still in the darkness hoping to catch the silent flight of one of nature’s greatest camouflage experts.

But then, early in 2024, at the very end of a long hike with my camera, in full daylight and about twenty feet from my car, something swooped from tree to tree without a sound, setting off the owl alarm in my head. Three Long-eared Owls had perched for rest in a tiny clump of cover. I was not the only birder to see those owls that morning, and the excitement was palpable. But all our geeking out was done in hushed tones, slow walks, and from respectful distances. I managed a few snaps with my long lens, and close to a quarter hour of observation from afar, and then left to reduce the number of humans in the immediate vicinity.

And I learned an important lesson. My posted photos of the owls were greatly appreciated; but my identification of where I’d seen them was not. Some gentle prompting on social media led me to remove location ID from the posts. Owls are so sensitive to human interaction, not even eBird will publicly display the location info of my sightings. The idea is to see them, feel blessed, move on, and then don’t make it easy for anyone else to see them. Not because we don’t want other birders to experience our joy; but to keep the excited crowds to those in the immediate vicinity at that moment.

So, enjoy the photos of my owls. And never mind where I saw them exactly. No offence. Just following the rules.

In Memoriam:

Flaco, the King of Central Park

Last night, birders around the world had our hearts broken by the terrible news that Flaco, a Eurasian Eagle-Owl (Bubo bubo) who escaped from New York City’s Central Park Zoo just over a year previously had been found dead on an Upper West Side sidewalk.

The story of Flaco’s unexpected survival in the wild after more than a dozen years in captivity played out in New York media and over social media as scores of thrilled Manhattan birders posted their daily Flaco sightings and photos. Released by vandals who cut through his Central Park cage in February 2023, Flaco was not expected to have the skills to feed himself or keep away from the myriad dangers to wildlife in one of the world’s most congested urban centers.

And yet, photos of Flaco with ubiquitous New York rats in his talons, proved his instincts for hunting were intact; and his wily avoidance of all traps set by zoo officials trying to recapture him spoke to an unstoppable drive for freedom. I checked on Flaco every single day, and my favourite photos were those of him, Batman-like, atop ledges, water towers and fire escapes, surveying the city that had become his kingdom. I have a work trip to Manhattan coming up in April, and I had already built time into my schedule to wander the Upper West Side on a Flaco search.

At this writing, it is still unclear how Flaco died. We know he collided with a building (sadly, a common way for urban birds to perish), but tests are being performed on his remains to find out if poisons in his diet (there are a lot of poisoned rats wandering Manhattan) might have made him more vulnerable to accident.

I’m hoping Flaco’s legacy will be an improved understanding of how wildlife and human settlement can coexist. Eurasian Eagle-Owls, while not a North American species are not particularly threatened (they are listed as LC, or Least Concern, on eBird). Perhaps the careful and benevolent encouragement of owl populations in urban parks is a better way to control vermin than poison.

Rest free, Flaco.

Read more about Flaco, and see more beautiful shots by David Lei here.