An Owl Being an Owl

We first saw this owl off a trail, calling through the eucalyptus, cypress, and fog. The owl then surprised us by flying closer, landing not too far from where we stood with another hiker. It plucked at its mottled, downy breast, preening the little remnants of its baby feathers.

As I watched the owl spin its head in a perfect arc, alighting without even a sound, it was easy to see why owls are sometimes revered, illuminated from within like seers, the wise ones, the Owl of Minerva. In other stories, owls are sorcerers or feared like the strix, while keeping the secrets of ghosts and omens. When owls take flight, they trail a long kite string of the magic, wisdom, and metaphysical meanings that humans apply but which they themselves had no part in constructing.

This young owl in the eucalyptus called out to its brother or sister across the grove, its downy feathers rippling in a gust that poured through the Golden Gate. The owl didn’t know the person standing next to us was looking for prophecy in its presence (“it’s a sign”). It didn’t know that I could barely keep my feet from hopping into a jig because it chose to land right here, right in front of us. It did, however, know and hear many things that we couldn’t … like the exact moment a vole’s tooth gnawed through the bark of a nearby pine.

To me, that’s the sorcery, that’s the seer — an animal so biologically suited to its task and so attuned to its senses that its ordinary skills and motions look like outright magic.

As I watched the silhouette grow dim in the last light of a San Francisco sun, I pushed away the temptation to wish that this owl was, indeed, a sign of some kind as our fellow hiker thought it was. I wanted it to be a protector, an omen of an abundant and good life to come. It was a challenge to think “this is just an owl being an owl” when it came toward us, it closed in on us as silently as a cotton puff. 

I settled on “it’s an owl, I’m lucky to have seen it. And that made me happy.”

Below, a short video of the same owl, issuing a screech or begging call