Bubo, the Great Horned Owl

by Jean Craighead George

  The young male titmouse had won Parus’s territory. He did not reign long, however, for the forces of spring had broken up the winter titmice groups and some of the young males had not yet found territories and mates. Therefore he was constantly defending his newly won area, and at the same time courting Parus’s mate.

  Otus, the screech owl, swung low over the limb where the young male titmouse was singing bravely to the female. There was no warning “seeeeee,” only a silence at the sugarhouse and a flaming April sunset. Again the territory was vacant.

  The woodland became more and more aware of Black Talon. Never before had she been so careless and evident. The crows found her often; the squirrels scolded her almost every morning; and the songbirds by the stream chipped at her frantically. Something was happening to the great tigress of the woodland birds.

  She was growing weaker. Her good right leg was stiffening. It had started last October on that night that she had missed the rabbit. She had hurtled herself full force after her prey. When she missed, her strike carried her into a boulder. The impact jarred the joints of her leg and rammed the thigh bone against her hip socket. Continued off-balance use aggravated the injury. Gradually the joints calcified and stiffened.

  One morning Black Talon was pursued for three hours by the tireless crows. She finally perched low in an elm along the fence row so that she could bury herself in the honeysuckle that grew up it. This was not the grand tigress who once stood steadfast on any perch of her choosing. This was a tired, injured bird seeking any shelter.

  As Black Talon limped into the foliage of the honeysuckle Bubo throbbed the white patch beneath his beak and flew. He cruised through the crown of the forest; his eyes searched the forest floor. At the sugarhouse he saw Falco, the sparrow hawk, who had returned to the clearing to hunt. Bubo plummeted into the basswood, his streaking speed muted by the soft edges on his feathers. The swift little kestrel barely was able to dodge the strike. He twisted desperately around the tree, banked along the fence line, and then pulled away over the open field with deep strokes.

  Richmondena watched the owl wing over the clearing. The cardinal had never seen the owl by light of day. He noted the golden pantaloons, the black circle around the yellow eyes, and the tremendous wings. Fear seized Richmondena and he did not sing for an hour after Bubo had gone.

  Bubo flew through the forest. He heard the crows mobbing Black Talon and turned toward the noise. He climbed to the forest canopy as he flew. Without pause he swept down upon the luckless Corvus who was fluttering low over the honeysuckle thicket, leading the attack on Black Talon. Too late Corvus saw the great talons above him. He threw himself in a wild contortion to sidewing the strike, but Bubo turned with him. At the last instant Corvus winged over on his back to stab at Bubo, but the driving talons hit him with a death-rending jolt and the sharp beak of the crow flopped down. It had all happened in two seconds. The other crows, caught in complete surprise, sped away and up. Bubo alighted only an instant, then took flight with his prey. Behind him the startled crows rallied and turned in pursuit. The forest rang with the bedlam of their crazed cries. But Bubo needed only twelve seconds to disappear. He climbed to the big elm back in the forest and dropped into the cavity. There in the dark hollow he was greeted by his two owlets, and the noise of the crows was forgotten.

  This was the secret of the owls. This was the reason for Bubo’s plundering the forest: the young owlets hiding deep and secure in the bole of the old elm. They were handsome birds, about two months old. Their primary feathers were bursting out of their sheaths. They were almost as large as Bubo.

  So well had Black Talon hidden her eggs that not even the crows knew that the owls were nesting in the old elm. Black Talon had selected the hollow not only to protect her young, but also to protect herself. She was becoming thinner and thinner. Bubo had fed her during the incubation period, and Black Talon had regained some strength and weight, but when the owlets had hatched she had worked with untiring devotion, and night after night she went hungry until the owlets were fed. Her strong maternal instincts drove her to exhaustion.

  One evening Bubo noticed that Black Talon was acting strangely. She was stretched on the limb of a basswood, her wings drooped, her beak resting on the bark. It was dusk and she was not hunting. She did not hunt at all that night. Bubo was alarmed. He understood that Black Talon could not bring food to her young. That was the night that the red-shouldered hawk disappeared.

  As they grew bigger, the young owls needed even more food. Bubo flew abroad by day taking pheasants and the larger game that lived in the sunlight. This was the beginning of the tension in the forest, and many died that the owlets might live.

  From this night on until summer the animals of the forest lived in terror. Not even the sunlight was protection. Richmondena, the cardinal, sang from covered perches, his eyes on the sky out of which the silent Bubo plunged.

  Sitta, the nuthatch, kept close to the boles of the trees. He and his mate began their nesting rituals under the strain of fear. The forest was no longer the sunny haven where each creature went about a specific routine. Bubo had broken the rules. He was flying by day as well as by night, swinging and circling over the sugarhouse, the slough, the stream, the old meadow.

  Melodia, the song sparrow, had built her first nest of this season under the hawthorn by the sugarhouse. She had four eggs in it; a cowbird had one. It was a cool spring day when Melodia started incubating. After a half hour she left her eggs to hunt food in the raspberry patch at the edge of the forest. When she returned she saw Bubo sitting low in the maple at the clearing. He was watching the grasses. His ear tufts were down and his round head looked larger than usual. Melodia flew into the woodpile and hid among the logs. She waited for the tiger-bird to leave. He did not. Occasionally she would hop from her hiding place and look toward the maple. The great head was bobbing as Bubo concentrated on a swaying grass blade or a twisting leaf. When the round yellow eyes focused on her, Melodia hopped deeper into the cracks of the woodpile.

  Finally Bubo heard the male pheasant crow in the woodland marsh. He left the clearing and flew through the trees. As he passed through the territories of the songbirds, his arrival was announced by a chip or a whistle. These signals of the birds Bubo came to associate with his daylight flights. He did not hear the carol of the birds as he flew, for they did not sing when he moved through the forest. The world of the songbirds was a frantic world in Bubo’s mind, filled with frightened chips and terrified silence. Bubo tipped his primary feathers up, scooped the air, and rode up a draft to the limb of a red maple that overlooked the marsh. He looked for the pheasant.

  Melodia had seen the shadow of the owl pass over the woodpile, but she had waited for some time before flitting back to the hawthorn bush. There she chirped and circled the bush, for the eggs were gone from the nest and the carefully woven grasses were strewn across the ground. A chipmunk had found the nest while Melodia was hiding.

  Bubo saw Black Talon less and less. She spent much of her time now in the second growth along the stream, still trying to catch food for herself and her young. When Bubo did see his mate he would become upset, for she was usually sitting in the open on a stump. Black Talon had turned to June bugs for a diet. They were plentiful and she could pick them up in her beak. Her big talons did not help her as they were not designed to close on such small food, and the beetles would crawl out between her toes and fly away.

  One morning Black Talon caught a mouse. It was heavy with young and could not move fast. Although Black Talon was weak from lack of food, she nevertheless responded to her maternal drive. She arose from the ground and flew low through the trees, carrying the mouse toward the old elm. She could not make the high climb to the cavity. She alighted on a low beech limb and looked up at the tree where her young were sleeping. She hopped back and forth, lifted her wings for a take-off, then stood silent for she felt the futility of such a climb. The mouse dangled from her beak. Finally she gulped it down. She dozed while
the food coursed through her body, bringing her a little strength.

  While she slept, Mephitis, the skunk, came out of his burrow and sniffed the forest air. It was a bright morning and he turned to go back into the darkness of his den. He hesitated, however, for the sunlight felt warm and good upon his back. He stretched out to bask in it, pressing his claws into the cool earth. In the tree nearby Black Talon slept. The huntress heard the movement in the leaves and opened her eyes. She saw Mephitis beneath her. Here was a great quantity of food.

  Black Talon dived hungrily toward him, closing her wings as she approached. She struck with a blow that rolled the skunk onto his back. She rolled with him, holding on with all her strength. The attack was a mistake. Mephitis survived the strike. He twisted and lunged. Black Talon held tight, but she did not have the strength to end the struggle. The skunk writhed and bucked, slashing at the owl with each turn. At length, his jaws closed on her breast. Black Talon took a fierce hold on the skunk’s head with her great beak, and the two were locked in a deadly struggle.

  The wild geraniums were rocked by the battle, as the beating wings of the owl created vacuums and gusts. Mephitis gave off his spume, but the weapon was too late; for although the skunk did not yet know it, the great talons held him in a mortal grip, and Black Talon was already dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TWO HOURS LATER there was a rustle of big wings striking the walls of the elm cavity. A fuzzy buff face appeared at the opening of the hollow, and a young owl steadied himself in the doorway. He twisted his head around and snapped his beak at the second owlet who was pulling her way up toward him. She jumped against the wall of the nest site and hung for a moment by her talons. Then the big wings fanned the musty air again and she walked up the wall to the rim of the cavity. There was a moment of sparring and she stood beside him.

  A red-eyed vireo flashed through the treetops carrying a billful of bark shreds to the nest it was building. The two round heads in the elm pivoted as they followed the flight of the bird. When the vireo was out of sight, the heads swung back and faced the forest before them.

  Bubo watched anxiously from a nearby limb as his owlets let the composition of the forest register slowly on their minds. He saw them sway and blink as they focused on the movements in the forest. Bubo was very excited. No moment in his life had been quite like this one. His bird emotions were so intense that his body trembled in holding them. His young were about to fledge.

  Bubo was completely absorbed by his owlets. He watched the larger of the two scratch her head with her foot. Tufts of natal down broke off from the tips of the feathers and sifted slowly down through the tree limbs. Bubo looked closely at the foot as it returned to the perch. One talon was white; the others were the bluish-gray of the immature horned owl. Bubo contemplated the owlet as she now swayed and hissed. She had the ferocity and size of the female horned owl.

  The young male who sat beside her was slightly smaller, in accordance with the usual sex difference of the birds of prey. His movements were quick. He was already alert to the twisting of the leaves and the sounds of things falling in the forest. Bubo was satisfied; two more owls now graced the wilderness with their nobility and courage.

  Clear Talon slowly raised, then flapped her wings. Leaves stirred around her and bits of feather sheaths swept through the air. She took a bearing on a nearby limb, then shoved into the air and flew heavily to it. She was followed by the young Bubo. He winged freely and boldly to the limb of an old maple almost fifty yards from the elm.

  Bubo was filled with anxiety and needed help with his fledglings. He watched the treetops for Black Talon. She would appear to witness this climax of their lives. It had been so long overdue. But Black Talon did not come, and Bubo could not wait. He followed his young, settling on a limb in the tree in which Clear Talon perched.

  He looked down at his owlets until the light went out of the forest, and, in spite of his concern, he felt an instinctive satisfaction at seeing his own likeness reproduced in the forest.

  Clear Talon screamed a penetrating “skeak-ak.” She was hungry. Bubo responded to the cry and flew off. He glided into the slough and came out of it with a black duck for Clear Talon. He helped her devour it. Then young Bubo screamed with pains of hunger and the old owl went out to hunt again. He came back with the cock pheasant of the marsh. He took it to young Bubo.

  Young Bubo took the prey while screaming at his father. Clear Talon saw the food and flew toward him. Young Bubo saw her coming, took a firm grasp on the pheasant, and flew off with his prize. It was much too heavy for him to carry, but he would not let it go and so he flapped down and down until he hit the ground. Clear Talon was also on the ground. She had not been able to climb to Bubo’s perch and had glided to the forest floor.

  The young owlets spent the next several days on the ground. They would not fly back to the forest crown. The trees were all tall mature forest trees with the branches too high for the young owls to reach. They sought the shelter of the big woodpile at the sugarhouse.

  Pipilo, the towhee, was still at the sugarhouse. He was exquisite in his full mating plumage, black head and back, chestnut sides, and white breast. His eye was like a red berry. Pipilo was nervous for it was time for his mate to hatch their first clutch of the season. He picked up a leaf in his bill and threw it into the air, then hopped onto a limb and looked at his mate. She was sitting motionless and content and gave no outward signal of anything stirring beneath her. Even the milk snake that had passed the bush yesterday had barely alarmed this strange little mate.

  Pipilo had a new mate this year. She was a young bird who had neither built a nest nor laid an egg, and Pipilo had watched her with concern as she fashioned her first nest. It was hidden on the ground in the raspberry thicket, but it seemed to him that the site was poorly chosen. He had often seen blue jays sitting on the stump nearby, and the jays always alarmed him. Furthermore an avenue of the rats passed only two feet from the nest. But Pipilo had nothing to do with choosing the nesting site.

  When the nest was completed the little female had come to Pipilo where he was feeding in the fence row, and he knew that her task was done. Pipilo had found the nest to be a facsimile of a towhee nest. The lining was poorly woven and the bulk of the nest was loose and open, but, with nature’s wonderful guidance, it was a towhee nest. Pipilo had sung, for he was filled with the importance of the season and his mate was returning his attentions. The following day she began to lay her eggs.

  That was fifteen days ago. Now Pipilo was waiting for his young to hatch. He did not remember his concern of many days ago when his mate had left the eggs for almost two hours while she hunted food with him. He did not remember how often he had clicked at her all through the incubation period as he tried to make her return to her duties. For a long time she seemed reluctant fully to meet the demands of incubation. Pipilo spent many hours talking to his young mate in the signals of the towhee, telling her when to join him in hunting food and when to return to her eggs. For the last few days she had incubated faithfully. She responded to Pipilo’s calls punctually, and so he had forgotten the first trying days of their nesting period.

  Today he was upset because his nestlings had not hatched. He knew they were due, for Pipilo had become attuned to the length of their incubation period with the mates of other seasons. He scratched the leaves, picked up a black beetle, and swallowed it. He looked at his mate again. She sat calmly and faithfully on the nest performing her duty. Pipilo awoke several times during the night. The moonlight streamed through the dogwood leaves. Out in the hayfield a Henslow sparrow was singing softly, “si-lick, si-lick.” He sang by night as if the day were too crowded with the volume of other songsters for his soft voice to be heard. When he stopped a vesper sparrow sang a bar of his brilliant refrain. Then the fields were silent until over the hill near the farmhouse a robin awoke and sang.

  Clear Talon did not move from the woodpile all night. She had eaten well and the excitement of fledging had made
her tired. At dawn, however, she awoke. She cast a pellet, flapped her wings, and took short hops into the clearing. Bubo opened his eyes and watched her. She should not be abroad now. He must schedule her to the night life of the owl. Tonight he would not feed her until late.

  Clear Talon was staring at the sharp lines of the sugarhouse. The shape was unlike anything else in the forest. The owlet flapped her wings to exercise them, found that she had lifted herself into the air, and without really intending it she flew awkwardly into the clearing. She circled it and tried to alight on a branch of a maple. It was too small to hold her. It dropped with her weight. She spread her wings to hold herself and finally came to rest between two branches, suspended on her outstretched wings. She looked at the clearing, reached for a foothold, and finally clambered onto a secure limb.

  Pipilo saw the owlet thrashing above him. He cried his warning and ran to cover under the raspberry bush. Through the rear focal point of his eye he could see his mate. She was moving and shifting on the nest. Again he cried his warning “tow-wee!” The female did not heed him, she looked down into her nest and pecked. One of her wings shot out and flashed in the sunlight. Pipilo was frantic. He warned her again, loudly and firmly. She did not even look at him. The long-awaited young were hatching and she shifted with the unfamiliar life beneath her. She was terribly excited, and although she heard the warning notes of Pipilo, she did not look for their meaning.