at this time of year, one would assume the gusty winds blowing all my plastic shopping bags into the lake would act as the harbinger for a bout of raw weather. 

not so. 

in fact, it was perilously close to being too warm for my lands end wardrobe today:  mock turtleneck.  (clean) fleece vest.  non-levis blue jeans clinging delicately to my child-bearing hips.  once again i dressed myself and once again, i sweated profusely all day long.

the stretch of favorable owl weather continues, though the winds will need to show some humility before i set up the nets tonight.  i am close to 400 owls already and with several more “pushes” (large owl movements) looming, am fairly confident i will top 600 and perhaps, even 700 birds this year.  

when it winds down, i am ready for it to do just that.   

this is the best time of the year, besides all the other best times of the year, like winter and winter and winter and a couple of days in early may. 

no moon.  incredible stars and planets and occassionally, northwest winds that mean what they say.

with each fallen leaf, the winter landscape becomes a bit more bold.  it opens and reveals,  no longer shunning cold and snow and driven, maniacal winds. 

survival will begin to show its cards now.  eat or be eaten.  the circle will not be broken. 

it was another tranquil night at the nets.  only 14 owls and no rush.  i was able to sit.  my back did not remind me of its stooped, banding position.  it was good.

i hung the first suet of the fall and from the stands of rotten aspen and birch, downy and hairy woodpeckers have added my back yard to their list of places to vist.  

red squirrels have ignored the sciurid gossip from their flying cousins and frequent the feeders, unaware that the sting of the shiny, magic orbs, is a patio door away.  even then, they always come back.  

eat up you bastards. 

the battle lines of winter are being drawn and i have nothing better to do.

until darkness arrives.

i am pretty certain that when i cash my chips in at the casino of karmic retribution, all the good will be undone by one bad: i did not share my apple pie. 

i was a bit apprehensive going to the nets last night.  i was solo, relegated to everything that occurs when one owls:  collection, measurements, documentation, vigilence, release.  

but mercifully, there was a lull, a calm before what will surely be the next storm.  eleven swets in 3 hours.  i was in bed by midnight.  asleep.  waiting for the rem, fibrillating moment when i dream i have left my nets open.

that dream seems to be recurring for me.  my former  recurring dream was being locked in a room at the astroglide factory with catherine zeta jones. now all i get is “i have left the nets open,” and let me tell you, that ain’t quite the same.

the week is looking to be perfect for owling.  cold, clear, and calm.  perfect.  one night of respite and i am ready for the next push.  the next frenzied evening when i intrinsically know “it’s on.”

it’ll be crazy again and again and again.  just like my dreams.

good night, catherine.

okay, i had some help.  some extra hands on friday and saturday, qualified pencil technicians on two of the nights, fresh apple pie last night.  oh, and before i forget…thank you dave and anne and judy and john and joan for the above-mentioned contributions.  but mostly, joan for the apple pie.

the overwhelming nature of owl migration continued last night.  i think the cynicism/sarcasm readjustment  yesterday afternoon, achieved from the heights of mount oberg was good because upon darkness, i was busy enough that those two….ahhh…”tendencies” did not surface.  plus, there were 6  kids under the age of 8 with me  and whenever the owlman is able to spell out profanities for the adults, he is in full charge of his functions.  

the kids all got to see a saw-whet close up and got to look at an owl’s ear and got to exude youthful wonderment about something they had never seen before.  the older kids couldn’t quite make out why i was spelling out so many words.  

it was good because you gots to edumacate ’em while their still edumacatabel.

179 owls in three nights. many talon punctures and me with an afternoon of salsa and sauce making on tap.  i can tell you up front that garlic and onion and aji crystal peppers in a  puncture wound f-u-c-k-i-n-g hurts. 

at this point, i am running a long race.  i try to keep steady.  pace myself.  don’t worry about sleep.  eat healthy.  avoid intoxicating beverages.  laugh at life’s follies. emphasize real work.  ignore the neighbor that shot off 300 rounds yesterday.  revel in the fact payback is a bitch.  ignore all the yuppy bastards on the shore right now. don’t piss me off . enjoy the fact that on this little bowl of land, i am at the epicenter of biology at its finest. 

focus.  exhale.  enjoy the apple pie.

if nothing else, the fall colors and autonomous trip to the top of mount oberg serves as the perfect petri dish for the reinvigoration of my sarcasm and cynicism. 

as of noon this afternoon, they have been revived. 

damn, i missed them.

there were so many people that the mandatory oberg lake and moose mountain overlooks were wait-in-line crowded, similar to the line in front of the world’s best donuts when word travels  that “they changed the grease.”  

there was the expected blend of outdoor and designer brand name outerwear, a curious mix of body odor and perfume,  and when a blue jean and unshaven gang of nefarious youth passed, i may as well have been at a bob marley concert.  

i also understand why lifeflight  has a red circle over oberg on its “places likely to induce a cardiac arrest on the north shore.”   and to think i made it to the top without my walking poles and cliff bars.

okay…i feel better now.  the onslaught of owls continued last night, but was halted by the passage of winds, right around 2300.  thirty eight more owls and now, i can officially say my hands are sensitive, which makes them the diametric opposite of me. 

i had a small group from north house folk school helping out, holding and making smarmy, laura erickson like comments about cuteness and endearment  and animal love and owl sadness.  they were having fun, so as a biologist, why would i want to correct them on the irreversible evils of anthropomorphisms? 

might be another big night tonight, but i don’t care.  like it matters.

thank you fall colors.

the strigidaen cosmos aligned last night.  crazy.  overwhelming.  a frenzied lather of feathery, footy little owls. 

second year, male boreal owl

i knew right away, shortly after unfolding my nets, that non-chalance had been thrown out out the louvered window.  there was no time for contemplation, no time to solve the world’s problems and bemoan the lack of enlightenment for every one who doesn’t think like me. 

there was only time for reaction. 

i told you it was coming and i told you it would be big.    

big big.  like the world in a kid’s eyes. 

but then, after all the commotion and incredulity and owler’s blood, it stopped on a dime.  right at midnight.  right after the tawdry moonlight cast emaciated shadows across the landscape.  

it was perfect timing. i was spent and frazzled, yet satisfied that of the 85 owls extracted and handled and measured and released, there were no owls that were not handled and released with care and attention. it’s an owler’s creed to place the owl above the needs and daliances of the owler. 

we ain’t shit.

towards dusk, just after the skies had turned bluer than blue, i watched as the last storm clouds moved over the lake and then, were gone.  

owls were written all over the gathering calm of september 29th…i could feel them, could see them.  “it was,” i told myself, “going to be a big night.”

so often, over the past 25 years as an owler, i have relied on my hunches to direct efforts that have produced both purposeful…and aimless  journeys.  “think like an owl”, i tell myself. 

mostly, it works.   

when an owler feels something visceral, there is a tangible sense that nature’s script is written and free of edits; that you are in on a secret.  i have found nests because of those secrets.  i have snowshoed for miles during daylight because something told me “this is where the owls will be”, then watched boreal owl courtship unfold without commercial interruption. 

those moments are humbling.

when the hunches prove wrong, however, the 3 mile snowshoe produces only severe, inner thigh chafing as its reward. 

it’s not quite the same.

like last night, for instance.  dusk moved towards dark and my nets were ready.  five minutes into the night, it started to rain.  hard.  i bagged my nets and waited inside, swaddled in two layers of fleece.  

shortly thereafter, mr. sandman paid me an unwelcomed visit.     

i fell into deep sleep.  i missed an evening of owls.  i was pathetic.  

when i awoke, it was too late to set up again and so, i rekindled my sleep, unwilling to test yet another owler’s hunch. 

tonight though.  well, i’ve got a really good feeling about tonight.  

no really.  i do.

the saw-whet’s talons are perfect.  curved, needle sharp,  fueled by reflexes that are blink-of-an-eye quick and tendons that respond to struggle with an exponential increase in pressure (see also: needle-sharp talons).

despite having nearly 30 years of raptor-handling experience and having fully assimilated the “grab their feet before the feet grab you” tenet of raptor biology, i am footed regularly by those affable, cuddly little bastards.  there is nothing predictive in their response and indeed, the docile saw-whet upon extraction from the nets is fully capable of inflicting physical pain and emotional carnage on the poor, innocent foolish owler that let’s his or her guard down.    

last night, after the rain squalls ended, i set up the two time- and owl-worn nets and had my customary front row seat for a strigidaen evening.  owls popped immediately but then, the winds came and persisted and i spent the last hour debating whether i should continue or seek comfort and solace in bed where…i am a true viking. 

i still have yet to experience the “omfg” owl night this year, but have a sneaking suspicion it could be tonight, given the calm, overcast skies, and the absense of whorish moonglow within the landscape. 

bring on the talons.

losing 2 hours of sleep a night wouldn’t seem like much, but after a while, the body suggests otherwise.  your mental focus drifts.  your back feels rigid.  your appetite disappears.  impure thoughts become your friend.   

i’m there, man.

if nothing else, the fall migration has been a bit enigmatic.  there are no set patterns and nothing i have seen makes me go “i’ve seen this before” in this, my 8th year of banding at my homestead, my mecca, my center of the universe.

depsite the personal bemoanings though, every night i come home from work means i get a bit excited.  i eat hurriedly.  my heartbeat elevates.  pain radiates through my arm. 

i’ve been through 25 years of both springtime and autumnal obsessive/compulsive owling and don’t know what i’d do as a substitute.  when i retire, i tell myself i will band all night and change my schedule to fit the owls’, like i used to. those were some crazy days of youth and erstwhile youth.

i was driven to satisfy my curiousity and for the most part, i did.

everything, and nothing has changed.

i knew it was coming: the lethargy and malaise, the viral reluctance to address the post-it notes defining the next task in my quest to bring order from chaos. 

chaos isn’t that bad. 

it is my friend.

last night, after the winds had left and night had returned to familiarity i sat, waiting for the owls to move.  they did so immediately.  for a while.  then they stopped.  then they began again. 

i felt like a strigidaen yo-yo. 

thirty-two owls later, with the moon casting cheesy shadows in my patch of the boreal forest oak savannah, i had tasted enough.  it is still early in the season and i must pace myself…like running a marathon, even though i have no idea why people would want to do that. 

run, that is.  sometimes i wonder why people would want to owl.

then i remember.