Each year, as winter approaches, bird-aware folk around here wonder the same thing – will it be a Snowy Owl winter? The answer this year is an emphatic no – there have been vanishingly few reports in the region except one or two on Nantucket and the Vineyard and one I was very lucky to see in Dennis back in December. Based on the low numbers of Snowys, I’m guessing it wasn’t a big year for lemmings in the eastern Canadian Arctic, so not many chicks were fledged. But there’s another owl of open spaces, one almost as accommodating to the slack jawed gawkers who seek owls at beaches in winter – this consolation prize is the Short-eared Owl, and it’s been a great winter for them on the Cape and Islands.
I say “consolation prize” with tongue firmly in cheek – I’ve actually seen a lot more Snowy Owls on the Cape than Short-eareds, which tend to be more elusive because they hide during the day, only revealing themselves to humans closer to dusk. Plus, though they breed all around the globe, including Hawaii, they’ve declined precipitously in the northeast during my lifetime, especially Massachusetts, and especially as breeders. The last heyday of Short-eared Owls in Massachusetts was in the 1980s and 1990s, though even then they were limited to the islands, plus a handful still breeding on Monomoy. Eleven pairs were still nesting on Tuckernuck in 1998, but the last breeding pair sadly blinked out within the last ten years or so.
The winter numbers were higher then, too, I still remember seeing more than ten of these owls hunting a complex of agricultural fields and wetlands in Middleboro one January afternoon in the late 90s, I in my early 20s, after which I probably celebrated by cranking some Pearl Jam and Nirvana on my way back to my parents’ house in Brockton. I remember them being very vocal as they aerially sparred with each other and with Northern Harriers, who represent the day shift of the meadow vole eaters union to the Short-ears night shift.
This winter, starting in late November, a Short-eared Owl in West Dennis established a pattern of showing up each late afternoon and delighting birders and other bystanders as it flew around and perched close in buttery, low-angle afternoon light. So a couple of weeks back I convinced the whole family to join me on an owl safari. By the time we got there, folks were already watching this performative owl fly around the marshes and dunes of this big barrier beach system. It was ideal – you just hung out in the parking lot and the owl would eventually come to you, perching on low cedars and signs spitting distance from the parking lot, unfazed by the passing cars and dog walkers. My kids didn’t even need binoculars. The best birder photo I saw from that week had it sitting tamely on a No Parking sign.
Like Snowy Owls, Short-ears like big open grasslands and marshes at the coast, including grassy airports, though they mostly stick to small rodents, while the hulking Snowys chase down big heavy ducks and even the occasional Great Blue Heron. Two Short-ears were at Katama Airfield on the Vineyard in late December. Another showed consistently during December through about a week ago at Crane Wildlife Management Area in Falmouth, and another was at Mass Audubon’s Allen’s Pond sanctuary in Dartmouth earlier this month.
I’ve been sitting on this topic for a few weeks, and now that I finally got around to it, the Short-eared Owl sightings seem to have dried up. I hope some reappear and you get to experience one – there’s nothing like a close encounter with an owl in the wild, and Short-eared Owls are among the extroverts of the group. But I think these days we’ll have to settle for the occasional one or two – I suspect the chance of seeing a dozen Short-ears have gone the way of tattered flannels and grunge bands. But for some of us, those things will never die. I wonder if I could still pull off that goatee I had in 1997?
