Bubo, the Great Horned Owl

by Jean Craighead George

  Black Talon had already laid her first egg in the nest in the slough when she heard the staccato notes of the female Cooper’s hawk. The hawk was circling above her. She looked down to see Black Talon sitting on her nest. Without ceremony she plummeted down through the trees and dived at the silent owl. Black Talon pulled her feathers close to her body and looked up. Her head circled as she followed the agile body of the hawk swooping and diving through the tree limbs. She was about to leave the egg to the cool morning air and battle the hawk for the nest, when Bubo came in from his hunting. Black Talon could hear his beak snapping at quite a distance and she knew the hawk would be taken care of. Bubo perched high in the treetops, and when the hawk dived at Black Talon for the third time he sped swiftly through the limbs to intercept her. The agile Cooper’s hawk veered and flew to a tree at the edge of the slough. She was about to fly on to the marsh when she saw Black Talon’s horns jutting above her nest. Again she sped back to strike the owl. Bubo saw her coming and met her as she winged in. They clashed in a flashing display of wings and talons. The wiry accipiter spun free of Bubo’s powerful talons and darted skillfully through the limbs of the forest and across the marsh. Bubo followed her to the edge of the slough and perched on a dead tree limb.

  From nowhere there came a “caw.” Corvus had been soaring around the forest looking for trouble. He saw the owl, and with a deep flap took up his dedicated life’s work—chasing owls. He called together a mob of about twelve, and they spent the morning harassing the proud Bubo.

  For the next month the secret of the owls was kept by the nature of the slough. Water stood several feet deep around the base of the trees. No prowler could come by land. The dense small branches of the treetops discouraged the crows from spending too much time there, and the big hill that rose from the valley was like a blind to the west. Black Talon sat patiently on her eggs.

  One night she heard the owlets within their eggshells. She looked across the woodland trees with alarm, fearing that the pips she heard so loudly would be heard by others who might want to destroy her young, but her secret was safe, and several days later Bubo and Black Talon were the parents of two awkward owlets. They snuggled wet and wobbly into their mother’s breast feathers, rocking on their round potbellies as she touched them with her beak.

  Bubo received the news of their hatching through the movements of Black Talon. She stirred and shifted and wiggled all night as if something alive were struggling beneath her. He understood the meaning of this language and swooped through the forest in great excitement. He came back with a rat, then circled fiercely over the slough, for this was a moment of the greatest importance to the owls of the ancient forest.

  At the end of the week, when the owlets were puffs of grayish-buff down, and their big beaks and feet seemed to fit them better, a long warm rain came to the Michigan lake region. The last of the snow melted and slipped down the valleys into the streams and rivers. Black Talon remained over the owlets all day. About ten o’clock at night the downpour stopped for a few hours, and Black Talon left the nest to hunt with Bubo for the first time in many weeks. The night air was warm, and the owlets well protected in their natal down. Furthermore Black Talon had pushed a rabbit against them for warmth. Black Talon would not stay long, for her sensitivity to the weather told her that a change was coming. Far to the west a freezing wind was blowing toward the lake states.

  The huntress went to the creek forest for her first excursion. She was acutely aware of the pleasure of the warm wind passing through her wings. Her sense of freedom was intense. It had been long since she had winged along the stream bed. She looked down on her old haunts with all the joy that she was capable of. Suddenly her big eyes, which in the darkness were almost all black with only the finest rim of yellow, sighted a mouse scrambling along the bank of the stream. It was a difficult place to strike, but she was hungry. She dived onto the animal.

  As she struck the mouse swerved toward the stream. Black Talon jumped down the bank to a log. She felt a stabbing pain in her left leg. The jaws of a mink trap had closed on her foot and she was captured on the bank of the stream. She pulled to be free, was snapped back by the chain and lay stretched on her breast on the bank. Though her leg bothered her, she pulled and flapped again and again. Then she became frantic as she realized she could not get off the ground. For nearly an hour she strained at the trap and chain.

  A skunk burrowed out of his leaf-choked den to prowl the stream bed this warm night. He heard the whisk of the owl’s wings as they beat the ground, and hurried up the stream bed to see what was stirring. He waddled toward the struggling bird. Black Talon heard him approach and stood up. She snapped her beak, arched her wings, and lifted the feathers of her body. She swayed from side to side, and the skunk stopped where he was. He realized she was impenetrable with her head swinging low, her eyes blazing, and one foot poised to snare. He backed away and walked down the embankment.

  When he had gone, Black Talon pulled again at the trap and chain. She wrenched it with her powerful beak. She no longer felt pain, but an insufferable need to return to her owlets. Already the night was becoming colder and colder.

  Bubo brought a rabbit back to the nest and laid it gently on the bulky rim. He had been hunting many hours, and was uneasy not to find Black Talon with the owlets. He looked down at his progeny huddled together. He touched them affectionately with his beak, then flew off to the pine on the hill. He waited and watched for his mate. The hours passed. A cold wind began to blow from the west. The temperature dropped rapidly, and Bubo became concerned. He flew closer to the nest in the slough and watched it with undiverted attention.

  The wet limbs of the trees began to crackle and freeze. Bubo flew to the rim of the nest and looked at his downy young. They were still warm and comfortable. Bubo bobbed his head and peered into the glassy limbs of the forest. Something had gone wrong. Black Talon was a devoted mother. She would return if she could. Bubo climbed up into the cold wind currents above the forest and slowly soared over his territory, scanning the ground as if to find the answer to his problem.

  The sub-freezing gale from the west blew strong across the great lakes. It began to rain again, cold, freezing droplets. Bubo came back to the nest. The owlets were huddled wet and cold. They raised their heads and opened their mouths. Bubo tore apart the food he had brought and bit it until it was soft and juicy. He fed the owlets until they were either too cold or too full to care for more. Finally they fell asleep, but Bubo did not feel at ease about them. For a long time he held a piece of meat in his beak, waiting for one to lift its head for it. Gently he prodded them with it, but got no response. The wind blew stronger, and the trees of the slough cracked and dipped before it. Bubo lifted his head high and watched the sky for Black Talon. The freezing rain began to annoy him, and he shook and fluffed his feathers.

  As the wind mounted into strong fierce blasts, Bubo settled over his young to protect them. For an hour the wind and rain gathered strength. The owl tree leaned with the gale. It moaned along its entire bole. Up on the hill a giant maple twisted and tottered. For an instant the tough fibers of the wood held the tremendous weight, then another wind wrenched the fibers loose around the rotted core and the great tree plunged to earth. At first slowly, then, as it gathered momentum, swiftly. There was a loud splintering as the heavy crown of the maple cracked through the branches of Bubo’s tree. It was too much for the old nest tree, already strained to the breaking point. It leaned beneath the weight of the maple, and fell slowly toward the water of the slough.

  Bubo dug in his talons and held to the sticks of the nest as he watched the crown of the maple hurtle toward him. The little branches did not hit him as they were checked by the limbs around the nest. The young squirmed beneath him. Then his own tree began to lean. The owl was frightened; he looked around at the air that was filled with snapping limbs and flying sticks. The noise was tremendous. He could stay with the owlets no longer. He fell out of the nest onto his wings and somehow maneu
vered out of the path of the falling nest tree.

  The owlets slipped from the nest without resistance. The cold black water of the slough, which had been their greatest physical protection for over a month, received them. Bubo banged into the side of the hill, turned on his back, and stabbed the air with his feet. Now the night was silent, but for the soft dripping of the rain. He lay stunned and frightened for several minutes, then turned over and stood on his feet. He looked up into the storm. Once more the wind was roaring through the forest. The owl could see his pine lashing and twisting under the pressure of the gale. He waited until the gust died, then lifted himself into the air on wet heavy wings. He perched on the lowest limb of the pine where the force of the storm would not thrash him too much. Taking a firm grip on the limb against the bole, he managed well during the next three hours of wind and cold rain.

  Along the stream bed, Black Talon still fought the trap that held her. She was exhausted and now rested longer and longer between her battles with the chain and the trap. The frigid coldness and driving wind of the night alarmed her. She pulled in the direction of her nest as if another inch might bring her to her young. All night she listened to the thundering wind breaking trees with its force. She was on the stream shore, behind the protection of the bank, and the wind hardly reached her. Just before dawn she leaned down and hooked the tip of her powerful beak in the steel circlet that linked the chain with the trap. She pried with an extraordinary power fired by desperation. The circlet opened slowly, and the chain slipped to the edge of the break; a twist and she would be free. But Black Talon gave up. She was spent. She stretched out on the cold earth and laid her beak on the ground. She listened to the storm abate and the rain slow to a drizzle. Her tired lids closed over her eyes and she submitted to her destiny.

  But greater than her zest for life was her drive to perpetuate her species. As her body rested, her bird emotions began to stir again. She must get back to her nest. Once more she pulled on her great wings. The chain slipped through the circlet, and with a jerk Black Talon was free. The trap still gripped her foot, but she was free. She flew to the bole of a storm-felled elm. She felt weighty, and her numb foot was useless. She toppled over and caught herself on the spread of her big wings. Then she stood on one leg and tested the weight of the trap. It was not as heavy as a squirrel or rabbit. With strong beats of her wings she climbed into the air, slowly gaining altitude until she was above the forest. She coasted on a wind to the slough, then sideslipped through the trees. She stopped short of the fallen nest tree and cried, then jumped on her tired wings and circled around the splintered maple and crushed nest tree. She dropped almost into the slough where the remains of the nest still clung to the crotch. There were no owlets. She landed on a limb and, already exhausted by her fight with the trap, she trembled with emotion. She was cold, and even lifting her feathers did not warm her. The cold came from within.

  Bubo saw her from his pine limb. He called softly “whooooo.” Black Talon warmed slightly at the sound of the familiar voice. Wearily, and in great soreness of body, she flew slowly, slowly to the pine.

  The trap clanged as she settled beside her mate. Bubo looked at it with alarm. He understood as much as was necessary for an owl. He watched his mate sink wearily to her breast. Her head drooped forward, her wings sagged, and she slept so deeply that he could scarcely hear her breathe. For the second time the horned owls of the old forest had failed to raise young.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BY LATE SPRING Black Talon was accustomed to the steel trap that gripped her leg. She learned to fly with it, and to perch comfortably with it. Eventually she learned to alight without jangling it. She developed into a rightfooted huntress, although she ate poorly while perfecting this skill, and for a while it seemed as if she might not survive. It was her intelligence that saved her.

  For almost a week after she acquired the trap she did not eat. She tried to take rabbits, but she did not have the accuracy or the strength, and night after night she clanged to strike with no reward.

  One rainy night she alighted on the stump near the stream and hunted the earthworms that were emerging from the grass after sundown. She ate her fill of these, and flew off to the pines to rest on a full stomach. As she alighted, she put her right foot down first. There was no jangle of the trap, and for the first time in a week she made a landing that was not announced by the clanging of the metal. Black Talon was aware of this silence, for the success of an owl depends upon its muted flight and attack. She was not sure what she had done, but she knew there was a difference. She finally flew out of the pine, circled, and came back. She started to alight with both feet, then circled out again. This was the old familiar method, there was something else she must do. She circled the stream forest for about fifteen minutes, then came in for another landing. Her right foot shot out and she landed without sound. She did it again and again until she had set a pattern of action between her right foot and her brain. Then she slept through the night.

  Two nights later she discovered that by pulling her left foot and the trap up into her breast feathers and using only her right foot, she could kill a mouse. With the trap buried in her soft breast feathers it made less noise as she plunged to strike. Her right foot became accurate, and Black Talon began to gain weight and strength as she became skilled at this method of hunting. She turned all her attention to small game; mice, moles, birds. At this she was successful, at hunting bigger prey she was not. Black Talon learned.

  When she was not hunting or sleeping Black Talon devoted her time to tearing at the trap. The pain of it had long since died, for there was little feeling in her legs. Her leg bone had been broken by the first hard snap of the closing trap.

  She had survived the hardest part of her trying period as a free captive—getting food the first month. Now that that was solved and she was gaining strength, she had time to work at the next problem, removing the trap. Time and constant picking and tearing at it finally solved this, too.

  One night she was particularly annoyed by the trap. She jerked and pulled as if it were a tough prey. Then she took her own numb foot in her beak and gave a violent pull. The weakened leg parted and with one more powerful twist she became a one-legged huntress.

  Black Talon flapped and fell against the pine bole as the weight of the trap was lost. She did not hear the crash of the metal on the earth below, so interested was she in her sudden freedom. She touched the stub of her leg with her beak, flapped her wings, and stood straight and erect on the one foot that was now as strong as two. She flew out into the night air and circled and twisted and soared, enjoying the lightness of her body and the ease of her flight.

  Life did not seem so desperate to Black Talon now. She began to focus her attention on where to hunt, not how to hunt. The old meadow was an excellent place to mouse, the clearing around the sugarhouse an excellent place for birds and small mammals. And so Black Talon, with the deadly accuracy of her right foot, came to be the terror of the sugarhouse community. Every evening she came to the clearing early and took her perch upon the limb of the basswood.

  Parus, the titmouse, was frantic. His nestlings were about to fledge when Black Talon began to hunt the clearing. Each night she returned, and each night the restless young titmice were nearer to their fledging time. Parus understood that the owl had made a habit of hunting the clearing. It was not by chance that she was here. He wanted to get his young away from the huntress.

  One morning he did not take the food into the cavity, but stood outside the nest dangling a green larva before them. Presently a tiny bird, still peppered with tufts of natal down, fluttered out of the dim cavity into the sunlight. One after another, the five little titmice fledged. The clearing was loud with the call of screaming young birds and excited, anxious parents.

  All day Parus and his mate fed and watched their young. Then evening came, and Parus grew nervous. He chased his fledglings into the bushes. A few minutes before sundown, one cantankerous youngster appeared sudden
ly on the end of a long raspberry stem. Parus saw him. If he were to live he must be disciplined. Parus flew at him and knocked him to the ground with the tip of his wing. He scolded the bird. It flitted to a stem deep in the bush. Parus stopped scolding and cried “seeeee.” The clearing became silent. Gliding through the twilight came Black Talon, tipping the ends of her primaries as she steadied herself on a bumpy air current. She alighted like thistledown on the limb of the basswood, and stood tall against the sunset. To Parus and the other songbirds, the entire clearing was owl. Black Talon’s presence darkened the sunset, and the only image in their brains was the tremendous huntress whose pupils grew bigger and blacker with the fading of the night.

  Parus did not try to get back to his stub. He sat near his fledgling and suffered great fear. Black Talon’s head bobbed, her wings lifted, and she swooped into the hawthorn thicket. Richmondena, the cardinal, set up a wild series of chirps. Wings fluttered in the shadows of the copse, then there was silence. Some tragedy had befallen the cardinal family. Black Talon came back to her stub and ate. Then she flew northwest.

  All the next day Parus tormented his fledglings until they obeyed him instantly. They hid promptly under leaves and in cavities when he scolded or warned them.

  Sitta, the nuthatch, was alarmed all that day, for his young were fledging. The gay little nuthatches soared from their tree cavity and landed heavily on the limbs of the forest trees. They made a great noise, attracting the attention of the entire sugarhouse community. Sitta and his mate flew from one to the other, frantically feeding them as much as they could, trying to keep them quiet. They could not fly well enough to escape a hawk or an owl. Yet despite their parents’ warnings, the young nuthatches attracted attention by making many short flights. When they were hungry they called and called. Their parents brought them food until finally around noon they were stuffed and quiet.