A Little Night Magic

I was racing the sun and stuck behind a slowpoke.  Each minute, each second, I crawled behind the dark sedan; I lost another ray of sunlight.  I cast an anxious eye to the horizon as I crested yet another hill heading toward the Liberty Loop trail at the Wallkill.  Although it is not far from my house, tonight the trip seemed to last forever.   Yes, I had decided spontaneously.  Yes, I had waited rather too long.  But still. “Why, oh Why, are they always in front of me,” I wailed.

I finally pulled into the parking lot fully expecting to be by myself, as is often the case, to find 5 other cars bellied up to the bar, as it were.

I stumbled from the car, hastily pulling on heavy gloves and a hat with earflaps.  Stomping up the snowy path with booted feet, I hoped that the 2 pair of socks I was wearing would be enough this time.  After exchanging pleasantries, and accepting an offer to peer through a scope at a Bald Eagle, I settled down to wait. We all scanned the marsh, side-to-side, front-to-back, side-to-side, front-to-back, then turned and did the same across the street.  I held my breath at each ghostly pass of the harriers working the marsh in the gathering gloam.  The sun slipped beyond the hill turning the shadows to midnight blue.  The transition came quickly.  One minute, they were Harriers and the next they had magically turned into Short-eared Owls.  As if, as if, the Harriers had thrown off their daytime disguises to reveal their nighttime nature.

It is a crepuscular magic that I never tire of.

Short-eared Owls at sunset

As the sun sank lower, cars started to arrive at the Liberty Loop parking lot.  They pulled in by ones and twos.  I had been standing there for hours with my feet ice cold in the snow jawing with some bird photographers.  We watched Harriers, Red-tailed and Rough-legged Hawks, a Merlin and loads of  Canada Geese and Sparrows.  A Barred owl started to inquire about our dinner arrangements. 

One of the photographers had been coming to the marsh for weeks and had not seen a Short-eared Owl in all that time.  I had not seen one there since mid-December.  As people arrived asking about the Owls, we all just shrugged.  Many people left, heck, I left.  But after a tongue-burning cup of cocoa, I came back to resume the vigil.  

Friends of mine from Long Island arrived bubbling with news of having seen Long-eared Owls.  As they told there story again and again for new arrivals, I idly scanned the marsh.  They must have brought owl luck with them for as the sun inched further in the west and the sky’s pastels turned fiery, a Short-eared Owl rose from the marsh and started to course back and forth.  I whirled around shouting at the photographers chatting in the parking lot. “We’ve got owls!”  Everyone hustled up to the upper level.              

In the end there were 4.  The cool thing was that it was light enough that you could easily see the differences between the male and females and tell them apart.