The owl looked straight at me over his left shoulder, then swiveled his head about 350 degrees and looked straight at me over his right shoulder. Which made me laugh louder than I should have.
His eyes were a bright yellow. Maybe not a banana yellow so much as banana jellybean yellow, something close to the same color as a grackle’s eyes, but a little less color-saturated, and about 10 or 15 times the size, with possibly 10 to 15 times the acuity, and a definite kajillion times more charm.
This one was an Antillean short-eared owl, a subspecies of the short-eared owl, one of the most widely distributed bird species in the world. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, as well as a lot of outlying islands, such as the Galapagos, the Falklands, Hawaii and several western Pacific islands that are almost too small to find on a map.
This one most likely came from Cuba.
There are about 10 subspecies of short-eared owls around the world. In North America (and Europe, northern Asia and northern Africa) we have the subspecies flammeus. While they do winter in Florida, we don’t really see them in the Keys.
Every few years since the 1970s, the Antillean short-eared owl has been seen in the Keys, almost always in April, though rarely for more than a couple days at a stretch.
There are a number of field marks, but the easiest way to identify the Antillean is by the dark feathers that encircle their facial disk.
A lot of American and Canadian birders consider the Antillean subspecies to be a bankable bird, meaning it may eventually be considered its own species, and could then be retroactively added as a new species on their life list. Which isn’t crazy. Last year the barn owl, which is distributed in the similar every-continent-but-Antarctica range, and has been considered a single species forever, was split into three separate species.
The bird I was looking at, the one doing the cute Linda Blair impersonation, had been seen on Sunday night by Chris and Beth Bergh, who were walking through the park just north of the Seven Mile Bridge. I believe they’d heard about it from someone who’d seen it the night before.
It was in a grassy little micro-vale, a dip in the ground really, next to a very small hammock, inside the curve of the bike path.
Chris had texted me about it the night before, but I decided I wasn’t going to chase it. It was too far to drive, especially for a species and subspecies I’d seen before.
As the day wore on, though, it began to eat at me. When was the last time I’d seen an owl in the Keys? When was the last time I’d taken the risk to spend several hours making the effort to chase a bird I probably wasn’t going to see? When was the last time I’d had the joy of sitting in Key West traffic during rush hour?
I thought about the fact that it had been more than a decade since I’d last seen an Antillean short-eared owl, or any type of short-eared owl, and how I still looked to see one in that same spot at Fort Zach every time I was there.
Drip, drip, drip, until late in the afternoon, possibly a little too close to evening, I penned the dog up in the kitchen — she eats books if we don’t, and from the kitchen she has access to the fenced-in backyard — grabbed my camera and binoculars, and headed north.
I got to the parking lot at the Marathon end of the bridge around 7 p.m., but the lot was full, and I had to wait an interminable four or five minutes for someone to leave so I could take their spot. Who knew one of the most famous bridges in the world would be a popular place to see the sunset? Other than everyone who lives in Marathon, I mean.
As I was starting down to the bike path I got a text from Chris Bergh. Beth was looking at the owl at that very moment. Excellent, I thought. No need to hurry. But then I remembered that short-eared owls could be somewhat crepuscular. The sun was starting to set? What if the bird decides now is the time to go out on a hunting run? I got a little less lackadaisical in my stride.
I found Beth in the very small hammock. She was with her friend Claudine Bartels, who was sitting on the ground with the long lens of her camera raised. I followed the line of the lens and about 20 yards away, sitting in the grass, was the owl, blinking his yellow eyes in his dark-rimmed face, nonplussed by the attention. I raised my camera and took a couple shots just so I wouldn’t feel like I missed it.
Beth noted it was a little worrisome that the bird had been in pretty much the same spot for three days, including in the aftermath of the Seven Mile Bridge Run, where tons of people would have been around. No doubt whatever wild thought had inspired it to fly here from Cuba had led to it being somewhat exhausted. It was also a little worrisome that the bird was so nonplussed with so many people around, keeping an eye on us, but not reacting beyond that.
Beth was worried enough that she had already called the folks at Marathon Wild Bird Center, who were on the way to assess the owl.
In the meantime the bird spent a lot of time preening, and at one point leapt a few feet in the air, then dropped face-first into the weeds, like it was hunting, all good signs of health, making things a little more ambiguous. Claudine and I both took a lot of pictures.
The general rule (as I understand it) with birds is, if there is nothing visibly wrong with them, and they are not easy to catch, they are probably fine. When Dana Child, a volunteer with the center arrived with his white pick up truck and pulled a big net pole out, he caught the owl in two tries. Which is pretty easy on the catching birds scale. So he took the bird to the center to get checked out.
When I called Kelly Grinter, who runs the center, on Tuesday morning, she said the bird was in very good health. No visible injuries, not underweight, and it didn’t have any of the signs of neurological issues or having ingested something toxic.
Maybe the bird was tired. Maybe it was just very mellow.
Kelly said they’d keep an eye on the owl for a day or two, then most likely release it in a different spot, somewhere less well traveled and a little further from the highway.
