Naturally

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

Samuel Beckett wrote that in 1938. "Nothing new under the sun" is a phrase from Ecclesiastes, suggesting that human nature, life experiences, and core events repeat throughout history, making true novelty an illusion. I’m not disputing anything written in the Bible, but with our varied weather, everything is new under the sun—and under the clouds.

A beautiful morning gave a beautiful voice to the birds.

By April 3, more than 20 baby owls had been admitted into The Raptor Center’s hospital since March 3rd. The earliest spring baby arrivals at TRC’s raptor hospital are great-horned owls. A barred owl, found stuck to ice in the Twin Cities metro area after a weekend blizzard, arrived on March 17. The young owl was reunited with its parents and siblings after healing from its wounds. The next day, an eastern screech owl chick fledged too early. It was healthy and returned to its nest cavity the same day. In the past 10 years, only two young screech owls were admitted in mid-April (in 2015 and 2020) with the rest of the young screech owls admitted in May at the earliest. The parents of this one started nesting early.

The International Owl Center’s JR the eastern screech-owl has had plush toys for 8 years. Rarely, an owl will eat a small piece of a toy, but it comes out with the next pellet. One day, JR was not his normal self. He hadn't eaten his food from the night before, which was out of character for him. Security camera footage showed he had eaten the entire wing of a bird toy, which was about as long as he was tall. JR went to The Raptor Center in St. Paul where radiographs confirmed the giant piece of plush in his stomach. The toy’s wing was removed by the use of an endoscope. JR went home, where the good people at the International Owl Center (in Houston, Minnesota) said he sang (albeit a little hoarsely), and his appetite had returned. I hope JR has lost his appetite for toys.

Wesley the Owl

While on the subject of owls, I read, “Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl,” a memoir by Stacey O'Brien about her 19-year relationship with Wesley, an injured barn owl she adopted. Their years together required O’Brien to provide 28,000 mice for Wesley’s dining pleasure. The author wrote that a barn owl could accurately locate a mouse under 3 feet of snow by homing in on the rodent’s heartbeat. The book chronicles their unique bond, discoveries about owl behavior and intelligence, and how Wesley helped O’Brien through a life-threatening illness. The book is heartwarming and engaging.

The Hall of Fame

I am a proud member of Ray Brown’s Talkin’ Birds Hall of Fame. I’d been enshrined into the living category of that HOF. That is the one to be in.

Q&A

Nelson Miller of Ohio asked if Eurasian tree sparrows were going to be troublesome for bluebirds. In 1870, a shipment of birds from Germany was released in St. Louis, to provide familiar bird species for newly settled immigrants. That shipment included 12 Eurasian tree sparrows. These chestnut-capped, white-cheeked arrivals prospered in the hedges and woodlots of the region, spreading through parts of Missouri, Illinois and Iowa. Now I see them in my yard. Unlike its relative, the more aggressive house sparrow, it isn’t a bird of the cities, preferring farms and wooded residential areas. They do compete with native cavity nesters, such as bluebirds and chickadees, but as to how big a problem they might become—time will tell.

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched a campaign in China to eradicate that species to protect grain crops. That plan backfired. Without sparrows to eat them, insect populations surged, leading to crop failure, and when combined with adverse weather, led to a catastrophic famine that killed millions of people. China imported sparrows from the Soviet Union to restore the ecological balance.

Steve Weston of Eagan, the Christmas Bird Count compiler for Minnesota, said this about the last CBC: “The story of the count was the 28 Eurasian tree-sparrows found on 5 counts. This is up from 3 birds a couple of years ago, which shattered the ‘casual’ designation of the species at the time. Later counts at a couple of the sites indicated that even these numbers were a fraction of the birds at these locations.”

Thanks for stopping by

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive. To breathe–to think–to enjoy–to love.”—Marcus Aurelius.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Do good.

They are called barn owls because they tend to nest, roost and hunt from structures like barns, silos and church steeples. Barn owls appear ghostly white when gliding over the landscape at night. The heart-shaped facial disc acts like a satellite dish, funneling sound to the ears, allowing an owl to locate prey in darkness. Barn owls don't hoot; they screech. Nicknames include: ghost owl, monkey-faced owl and steeple owl. Photo by Al Batt.