Lily b and ‘the Hoot of the Owl’

By Sara Wright

Image Courtesy of Brian Bondy

​A few months ago, Carol sent me a picture that Brian took of a bird’s nest in one of the canyons. I recognized the nest immediately as one that belonged to the Great Horned Owl.

I told Carol then that I could write a story about that photo, and here I am.

Finally!

Living in Abiquiu was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, and great horned owls were an intrinsic part of that story.

image Courtesy of Sara Wright

Image Courtesy of Keith Bowers

Image Courtesy of Milo Nikolic

A few days after moving to Abiquiu in 2016, I had placed my dove Lily b in a cage on the little porch outside my bedroom door. Imagine my shock when I looked out one evening and saw a great horned owl wandering around on the stones near the cage. Transfixed by the sight of seeing a giant meandering owl and a motionless Lily b peering down at a potential nemesis from his perch, obviously unperturbed (we read each other’s minds), was nothing short of amazing, so a couple of seconds passed before I scared the bird away.

I wasn’t worried because my dove’s cage was constructed out of thick metal hardware cloth and had a plywood roof- a sturdy roost that had been built for him so he could stay out at night. Black bears and hawks of all kinds never bothered him in Maine, so I assumed nothing could get to him here.
This naivete and stupidity on my part almost cost Lily b his life.

I left the cage outdoors because Lily b loved to sit in the rain, and even if I pulled the plywood back during a rainstorm, the mesh still protected him, and the second solid roof went back on at night.

One morning, I was awakened to a frightening, harsh croak my dove had never made before. Rushing out the door, I found my terrorized bird badly mangled and bleeding, numb with glazed eyes, suffering intensely from a deep gash that ran from his eye through his breast. Unhinged, I literally couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Kindly neighbors rushed us to a vet who said she was not certain she could save his life. It took my bird almost three months to recover. The deep wound had severed his vocal cords so he never cooed his most beautiful song again, but he lived and that was what mattered.

Who else but a night owl with powerful talons could have attacked him? I surmised that the g/horned owl must have come back, terrorized him, and once Lily b was on the floor of the cage – probably dazed/ or knocked out – the owl struck at him through the bottom 2-inch opening, a place where a tray was situated. I’ll never know.

So began our lives in Abiquiu. What is strange is that two weeks before leaving Maine, Lily b and a great horned owl conversed back and forth for three nights in a row (my dove was in the house). This conversation, although melodious, really disturbed me for reasons I didn’t understand, except that it seemed so abnormal. Normally, lily b became a rigid statue on his indoor perch whenever these owls hooted from anywhere, and they have such varied calls. Great horned owls are common in these forests around my house in Maine, and Lily had never spoken to one before.

Back to my story.

After we moved down to the river, great horned owls followed us, often perching on the roof or hooting from nearby branches at night.

Every morning when I walked to the river before dawn, I met a great horned owl who perched in one cottonwood over my head. I dissected owl pellets and sought these owls out in the canyon closest to the casita. Fascinated. Some days, a great horned owl could be seen sitting on a ledge on the edge of the stick nest in a craggy corner of that canyon or others. Occasionally, I would glimpse an owlet or two in canyon crags. For four years, I lived with owls of all kinds, but the great horned owl was the one I heard every night.


Great horned owls are in the genus Bubo. All other species are found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Great horned owls can be found living in most states throughout Canada and Alaska, the US, Central, and South America.

They are large, impressive, robust birds with two prominent feathered tufts on their heads that look like ears but aren’t. Ears are unevenly placed below the tufts for acute hearing, but for me it was always those eerie glowing yellow eyes that captivated me the most (even before daylight, they were visible)…those eyes and their fierce expressions. Their pupils open widely in the dark, and retinas contain many rod cells for excellent night vision. Their eyes don’t move in their sockets, but they can swivel their heads more than 180 degrees to look in any direction. The owl’s sensitive hearing is thanks in part to their facial disc feathers that direct sound waves to their ears.

Great horned owls are nocturnal, but as my experience demonstrates, it is possible to see them long before twilight or dawn. I sometimes spied one flying across the field with large curved wings. Their calls are beautiful, a deep resonant series of whoos. Curiously, ‘the hoot of the owl’ is one of the Tewa meanings of the word Abiquiu.

Although I heard other owls call during my four years in Abiquiu, none vocalized regularly, maybe because the others chose not to voice their opinions around such a fierce character that predated on smaller owls as well as most other wildlife. They can take down animals and birds even larger than they are, but they also love mice and other tasty rodents. Here in Maine, they predate on loons, geese, and ducks.

Finding pellets and pulling them apart is a fascinating hobby I engaged in routinely, trying to figure out just who happened to be the unlucky prey.
Great horned owl coloring varies from gray-brown to a sooty gray. In Maine and New Mexico, the ones I met all looked the same with reddish patches on their faces and white at the throat. Both sexes look identical, but the female is larger.
They live just about anywhere. Around Maine, they are common in the forests, but their habitat can vary from deserts, canyons, swamps, fields, to parks!

Great horned owls are particularly common in New Mexico. Breeding season begins in early spring. They are supposed to take over the nests of other birds, and I have no way of knowing who constructed the original stick cavities that were tucked into the cliff edges in the canyons near me, because the nests I found looked similar to the one Brian photographed.

When clenched, a great horned owl’s talons require a force of 28 pounds to open. That grip can sever the spine.

Another advantage of being such an excellent predator is a long life span – twenty years or more.

My guess is that climate change will not decimate this owl, whose populations remain more than stable. How refreshing.

After returning home from Abiquiu Lily b has not had any experience with great horned owls. Occasionally, I hear one calling from out my bedroom window, but his roost is on the other side of the house. When the Boreal owl visited this winter, Lily watched him from his indoor perch, so apparently small owls don’t bother him.

One final comment. When I was in my late forties, I had a very compelling dream. I was looking at an owl who had a large crystal on her head. The feeling tone was one of beneficence. Owls are often associated with prophecy, especially great horned owls, who can also be omens of a coming death/ disaster, etc, according to many Indigenous traditions.

Although it wasn’t a great horned owl, this dream still made me feel uncomfortable, and it has stuck with me all these years.

At about the same time, I spent a weekend in Maine with a Navajo Medicine Woman who made a point of keeping her distance from me. I was baffled and hurt. Finally, I asked her what it was about me that she disliked. She told me that I had Owl Medicine, and for the Navajo, this bird spoke to her of coming death. I lost four family members in the space of less than two years.