Northern Hawk Owl

A walk with David Sibley is a true eye-opener

“All birds look different to my dad.” I’ll never forget when Evan said that to me. It was a few summers ago on a sweltering day in the high mountains of the Rocky Mountain Front. We were on a long hike when he and I stopped to discuss the field marks of our local warblers. “Wait, what?” was my initial reaction. Evan, the eldest son of renowned artist and author David Sibley, just looked at me and smiled. What he meant and what I quickly realized was not that all bird species appeared different to his father, but all individual birds. And this gave me great pause. I have been working hard to expand upon fairly novice birding skills since my position as Pine Butte Guest Ranch naturalist requires a certain level of expertise. But at that moment with Evan on the mountain, I realized how far it was possible to go with knowledge and what true mastery looks like. I’m pretty sure I just stood there for a minute with my mouth open.

I’ve had the pleasure of co-instructing bird workshops at Pine Butte with David for the past five seasons and it is always an illuminating experience. This is a person who has researched, studied and painted essentially every bird in North America. He understands their molt patterns, behavior, regional occurrence and feather structure. And he recognizes all of their voices, regularly pulling birds out of thin air by their songs and calls with a precision that is uncanny. In fact, I have never been around another human being with greater visual and aural perception skills. Far from being intimidating, his gentle disposition draws one closer into a world of avian richness that few others hold the key to. One has the feeling of being in the presence of a soft-spoken but heavy-duty genius.

People come from great distances to chase birds across the Front; with the meeting of montane forests, wetlands, and native prairies, comes spectacular avian diversity. And the scenery isn’t bad either. This season, we had a full house of 16 from all over and of varying experience. Not everyone was a hard-core bird nut, but all were jazzed about being at Pine Butte with The Maestro. Our bird workshops are an interesting blend of David’s relaxed demeanor combined with participants’ enthusiasm for picking up unique species. These often include sensitive grassland birds like Sprague’s pipit, McCown’s longspur, ferruginous hawk and long-billed curlew. All told, we observed 150 species and added the purple finch, Lewis’ woodpecker and indigo bunting to the official workshop list. Natural history interpretation often requires great attention to detail, and this is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from David Sibley: the art of seeing what is there. That is, trying not to let expectations influence observation. One could imagine a better life and world if we could each embody such a simple, Zen-like idea. And this leads me to an amusing story.

Northern Hawk Owls : Moose Peterson's Website

Reprinted from the BT Journal , Vol. 6, Issue 2, May, 2001

“It’s an INVASION!!!” he exclaimed. I’d just gotten off the plane, Pro Trekker on my back, Eagle Creek Monster Trunk in one hand and Lowepro Madison 1100 computer case balanced atop the Lowepro Pro Roller 2 in the other hand as my good friend Arthur Morris greeted me with overwhelming excitement. We had met in Nome, Alaska to photograph birds in June of 2000, venturing there primarily for the fabulous shorebirds in breeding plumage. The last thing either one of us expected or planned on was an invasion!

Artie went on to say, “there are 14 Northern Hawk Owls here; they haven’t been here in nearly 80 years!” Now I’ve seen hawk owls for years in Alaska and for one reason or another, every time I had an opportunity to take their photo something would happen so I would end up getting skunked. Artie’s news didn’t excite me much, knowing my previous track record with hawk owls and when I relayed this to Artie he replied, “folks are seeing them everywhere, point blank range!” I knew better than to go by what “folks” had been seeing (been down that road before) and since Artie hadn’t seen them yet I paid the invasion no never mind. That was at least until the next morning, our first drive on the tundra of Nome.

Driving out of town on the Iditarod route into Nome, we headed towards one of the small “villages.” We traveled through the village and went all the way to the bend in the road, reaching the “train to nowhere” about 22 miles out. We were both scanning both sides of the road the entire time, looking for any birds to photograph and much to our great disappointment, saw darn few. So few we never got out of the car to even set up our cameras, once! A few words crossed both of our minds as we realized that either we were way too early or the birds were late in arriving. We’ve been there, done that before with tundra nesters in Churchill; we know the drill all too well!

We turned around and headed back down the same road we had just driven, our eyes still peeled for anything bird like, anything! Then, there sitting atop a pole was a small silhouette, perched with its back to us, backlit. We went forward until we could identify the bird, it was a Northern Hawk Owl! Well, we proceeded to get our gear out and set up when Artie said, “it’s flown off.

Northern hawk owl, Surnia ulula

Owls of the United States and Canada, a complete guide to their biology and behavior

Owls of the world, their lives, behavior and survival

Raptors of North America, natural history and conservation

Biology and conservation of northern forest owls, symposium proceedings : Winnipeg, Canada, February 3-7, 1987