Chatham Nature Writing Blog: Prompt #3 Entry

“Indigenous – (adj) originating in and characteristic of a particular region or country; native” (www.dictionary.com). I have lived in this neighborhood for twenty of my forty-two years on this planet, and no more than six years in any other locale. This is my home. I awoke this morning to a freeze-dried February dawn, and as I released the dog, a pesky, stupid beagle, into the yard, a hooting hello greeted me. I presumed it to be an owl. I can’t say for certain whether I have ever heard that song before in my near-wooded, near-suburban, near-city neighborhood. It is difficult to peg this place into one sociological category. We are shaped like a paisley print, our six connecting streets, and are lifted up and away to the east into a dense wood where on the far end, I am told, stands private hunting grounds. We are where city and country converge in a small, modern way. I used to play in those woods as a child, but as an adult now realize I only ventured one-half or three-quarters of a mile beyond my front door.

I didn’t know before that owls live here. I remember hearing the rat-ta-tatat repetition of an erstwhile woodpecker for three or four summers in the 1980s, but otherwise only deer, wild turkey, raccoons, chipmunks, and birds, lots and lots of birds, have made their way onto our streets, through our neighborhood and into my auditory circumference.

A simple Internet search reveals that there are at least 8 varieties of owl in Western PA: barn, saw whet (no typo, that is not supposed to be wheat), great horned, snowy, long eared, barred, short eared and screech. Of these, I have heard of barn and screech but know very little about them or the others.

What owl could have called to me this morning? Is an owl even a bird by classification? Encyclopedia Britannica’s on-line site defines it as a bird, a raptor, of the order Strigiformes, a word I have never heard. I wasn’t one for biology. There are thought to be 180 species of owls throughout the world.

According to The Pennsylvania Game Commission, which is currently conducting a study to count the number of barn owls in the state and to determine whether their population is on the decline, the barn owl can be described in one-hundred-twenty-five words. How stunning! A creature thought to have been the Bird of Athena, and the work of mythology and mystery long these many years, can be summed up in so few words. The necessary highlights so that I might recognize one are these: “10-15 inches tall...wingspan of 41-47 inches...distinctive long heart-shaped facial disk...referred to as the "monkey-faced owl"...nearly pure-white to dusky breast with small spots, small dark eyes...a hissing or scream-like vocalization” (http://www.portal.state.pa.us/). That was no hiss I heard this morning; it was, rather, the soft calling of a baby’s coo, the voice as nonthreatening as when my children nestled in their cribs and searched with sound for words when words were only just developing in their minds.

And where might I locate the owl; should they be found in my neighborhood? “They are found in agricultural fields, grasslands, and other open areas...nest in cavities of large dead trees, rock crevices...burrows in riverbanks....[and] as their name implies, they nest in barns, silos, abandoned buildings and artificial nest boxes” (IBID). A review of aerial photos of my larger neighborhood, my borough, reveals that the wooded area I traversed as a child is impressively large. It is an undeveloped tract in the era of community development, suburban sprawl and housing mania. I cannot read the acreage but it appears to be equal in size to the land covered by homes, schools and buildings. There is plenty of room for owls to live.

I have never taken a long look at where I live; it was always just the place I drove through and the environ in which I slept. I am grateful for so much raw Earth, so much around me that I hadn’t searched when my adolescent limitations kept me close to the front door. The possibility is out there – right here! – in my extended living spaces, that the barn owl could be found amidst a rock formation, large dead trees, and though the Monongahela River is no more than ten miles due north, one might be along those banks as well.

I won’t feed one but won’t disrupt its dinner either if I were to locate an owl. Something about that word “raptor” places me at a cautious distance. They eat rodents, and this, it is said, is good for farmers. This might be helpful information to the novel-in-progress I am penning.

You could say that I am indigenous to my neighborhood. I act like most of its citizens, have been here most of my life, feed my children and make my home here. But have I ever really paid attention to the world that is more indigenous around me than I could ever become? In his essay, “Among Animals,” John Daniel wrote that, “we have so far removed our lives from the wild...that many of us can scarcely see wild animals when we do encounter them” (Daniel 114). Add to that notion the fact we may not even hear them when they have been calling out to us for more than two decades, and one longs to grab the kids now that they are older, pick up a field guide and a pair of binoculars and our best boots, and head out beyond the immediate streets and into the wooded neighborhood to tally a count for the Game Commission. I heard a barn owl, maybe a screech, this morning, I would wager. Will we find it if we only look?


Works Cited

Daniel, John. “Among Animals.” The Trail Home. Pantheon Books; New York, NY. 1994.


“Barn Owl Conservation Initiative.”
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=622800&mode=2 (accessed February 12, 2012)


“Indigenous." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/indigenous (accessed February 19, 2012)