Owls of Springtime
I stand in
a patch of moonlight opened by the fall of a live oak that grew in the too soft
soil of the island. The moon is pale in comparison to its cousin the sun, so
the opening is bathed in shadowy half-light.
Human eyes
adjust remarkably well to this pale luminescence. My trained eye picks out the
individual branches of the live oaks and red maples; even the Spanish moss
draped over the branches is revealed in the moonlight.
Night
vision is clear but fades to shades of gray, like a black and white photograph.
The night world is one of sharpness and clarity, but without color.
Beyond the
island stretches the water and cypress world of Okefenokee swamp. Maps tell me
that this water world has boundaries, but my senses tell a different story. My
eyes and ears tell me that I could get in a canoe and travel forever, and at
the end of that journey the swamp would go on.
In early
March the cypress are already green with new growth. The maples are in bloom
with their particular red flowers and the light barely penetrates to the water.
American poet James Weldon Johnson used a land much like this as an analogy for
the darkness present before the creation of the sun. He referred to that time
as “…blacker than a hundred midnights
down in a cypress swamp.”
Out on the
swamp no movement is discernable. No bull gators bellow their amorous
intentions this late in the spring. No heron is spooked from its roost with
such hoarse squawking to make me believe that the ghosts of nearby Billy’s Island have come to life.
I step back
from the clearing, keenly aware of the incomparable alertness of the nighttime
creatures. The wondering raccoon needs no flashlight to find the remnants of
our evening meal. The owls in the treetop have seen and heard our small party
before we even think of looking for them. How many times have I cursed a
missing tent stake, despite my good night vision, only to find it beside my
tent in the morning, not four inches from the wooden stake I cut from my
firewood as a substitute? An owl has no trouble seeing the mouse it searches
out for dinner. A fox has no trouble following the trail of a bob white or a
rabbit. Humans alone seem limited in their sensory abilities at this time of
day.
The sense
that I most associate with nighttime though is hearing. The crickets chirp, the
tree frogs trill and the pig frogs grunt. I cup my hands beside my open mouth
and softly hoot into the darkness. So my mentor did before me and so his before
him. With a low call at first, I imitate the eight syllable call of the barred
owl. As I increase the volume, an owl answers in the distance, and then
another. The woods are home to a nesting pair, defending their territory from
me, the intruder.
Owls are
made that way. They will not tolerate any strangers wandering into their
territory. The island has just enough mice, voles, and cotton rats to support
them and one year’s progeny. The hoot of an intruder is a query of a traveler
looking for a home. The answer is the equivalent of “scram.”
Later that
night I awaken. Something has stirred the owls in the 3:00 AM darkness. Always vigilant, the pair
defends their island home.
