Day 98, Year 9: Search for Snowy Owls and a Movie
Date: Sunday, January 26, 2014
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Windy—Felt Like 3 degrees F with Windchill
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Snowy owls prefer to live in the tundra in northern Alaska, Canada and Eurasia, but once in a while they wander further south. The people who follow these creatures know that every year a few snowy owls find their way south, but in 1945 and 1946 they made a coast-to-coast invasion in southern Canada and the northern United States. In 1966 and 1967 they invaded the Pacific Northwest region of this country. Beginning in 2011, bird watchers started seeing more snowy owls in the northern US than in any normal year. And this winter they are being reported in record numbers all across the Midwest, the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic states. There have even been sightings in South Carolina and Bermuda. So either their population has increased dramatically or the food they depend on for survival, lemmings and voles, are scare. We have talked about going out to try and catch a glimpse of them since December, but it took an email from our bird watching friends Patsy and Eric Decker on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to get us going. They went in search of snowy owls yesterday on Assateague—one of our favorite places in the whole world. And this prompted us to go in search of snowy owls today on a beautiful Cape Cod beach. We called Heather to see if the boys would like to go with us, only to find that they were also going to look for snowy owls. So we arranged to meet at South Cape Beach which is about a 20 minute drive from here. We knew it was cold, but since owls live in the Arctic, we didn’t think that would be a problem. We forgot that we do not live in the Arctic, and none of us could withstand the biting cold for long. But for a short time we enjoyed the bright sunshine on the beach. We saw no snowy owls, just sea gulls, but it was worth the trip. We’ll definitely try on another day when it is not quite so windy and cold. Today we walked on the beach and used binoculars to look in the trees further inland. But what I read tonight tells me we should have been looking for them sitting on the beach or among the dune grass. They like tundra, sometimes grassland, but are never forest lovers. So quietly walking the paths just in from the beach and looking down, not up, will be my next approach. And the funniest thing of all is that I learned this in an article written by my daughter. I searched for “snowy owls on Cape Cod” and kept going down the list to find an article that sounded interesting. I found one, clicked on it, not paying attention to the source, and found myself on a WCAI radio page. After I read the article and looked at the photos, I went back to see who wrote it. It was one Heather Goldstone back on December 16. That daughter of mine certainly does get around! For everything from Fukushima to snowy owls, she’s my ‘go-to’ source of science info.
Our friends Bruce and Jane Woodin contacted us yesterday to see if we would like to go to a movie and dinner with them today. We’ve only seen them once since they returned from Mexico and now they are headed to Florida for about three weeks. And we’ve never been to see a movie here on the Cape. So we jumped at the chance to see them and to see the movie 12 YEARS A SLAVE. Whoa. If you have seen this you know it is a very difficult film to watch. The fact that it is based on a true story makes it even harder to watch, but the acting and directing was superb and it is certainly a story that needs to be told and watched. Film critic Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle summed it up best for me. “It provokes recognition in us of the very heart of darkness. It makes the unimaginable imaginable.” It is both profound and painful. Without seeing any of the competition, this film gets my vote for Best Picture. If you haven’t seen it, it is a ‘must see’ before the Oscars on March 2.
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| 140126 Day 98 Cape Cod, USA–Search for Snowy Owls |
