Barred owl.
I’ve always liked the sound of horns and whistles. Mournful ones. Like foghorns and train whistles. When I was a kid in land-locked Texas, I remember my mother reading me a children’s book about a sailor, and she might’ve imitated the sound of the foghorn mentioned in the story, I’m not sure. But I have a feeling that’s a small part of the reason I’ve ended up in coastal Maine these past thirty years.
Barred owl.
Today, pretty much all day, the fog whistles were moaning off Rockland Harbor—the one at the breakwater and the one at Owls Head. A day cloaked in a luscious miasma of fog.
The air clung to the earth, damp and still and relatively warm. Out back early, I heard crows and jays and chickadees and a downy woodpecker. I also heard the sounds of the tires passing on the wet pavement of Route 1. And the foghorns.
In early afternoon, dog and I took our daily Beech Hike break. The fog was thick, thick. On our approach up South Street I couldn’t see the summit of the hill.
A couple cars in the parking lot. The faint percussive echo of water dripping from the trees onto the papery fall leaves. I fitted Jack with his blaze orange vest, and we started up. No birds. Quiet but for dripping water. Ascending the open trail, I was admiring the soft, veiled landscape when I noticed a large dark shape on a limb of a lone distant tree. It was an owl, I could tell. A barred owl. I was sure of it. I paused to take long-range photos. Then we continued up a ways. Then I paused to take photos from somewhat closer.
Then we met two people coming down with dogs wearing blaze orange, in quick succession. I pointed out the owl to both; neither had noticed it. We crept higher to the point of the trail nearest the big bird—though still some ways distant—and I took more photos of what looked like little more than a dark shape in a tree in the fog. The owl was turning its head but did not move otherwise. So Jack and I headed off-trail toward the bird. I took more photos. Got nearer. Took more. By the time we’d reached a point perhaps fifty feet away, it kept is black eyes turned toward us—and then, suddenly, it flew away. Low to the hill, in a northwesterly direction. On perfectly silent wings.
Porch of Beech Nut.
I couldn’t really make out the shape of sod-roofted Beech Nut until we got nearly to the summit. I could see maybe a hundred yards in any direction. I heard a crow.
Returning, I there came from the southern slope the distant cries of a jay. We stopped near the wooded patch by the road and listened: nothing but the faint percussive echo of water dripping from the trees onto the papery fall leaves.
In the parking lot, I heard the cheeps of a chickadee coming from somewhere. Then came an odd washboard-like sound not far from the parking lot. We walked that way, the sound came again. Five or six rattling notes on a moving pitch. As we walked I realized the sound was nearer than I first thought. Then it occurred to me—it was the croaking trill of an amphibian. The unfamiliar song of a frog. As we stepped closer, the croaking-trilling stopped. [Later I googled the voices of our native amphibians and am pretty sure it was a northern leopard frog.]
The fog hung fast into evening. But tonight, the sky is clearing. I see evidence of the moon—and a star.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 1:15 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. Barred owl
2. American crow (voice)
3. Blue jay (voice)
4. Black-capped chickadee (voice)
Elsewhere
5. Downy woodpecker
6. Herring gull
Spruce.
Tags: American crow, barred owl, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, downy woodpecker, herring gull
