Almost Empty Nest

I’ve observed a great-horned owl on her nest for the past three months. This triggered my reflections on similarities between human and critter parenting experiences. It also added questions to those already swirling about my busy brain. One of those is do birds experience a sense of unsettledness like the one humans have when their young first leave home? After surviving those aching months when our youngest moved from home, leaving an unnaturally quiet house behind, I recall a moment when my husband and I looked at one another, and said something along the lines of, “We’re going to have to relearn what a world without kids in it is like.”  

As humans, we spend more time rearing offspring than wild creatures do. As a result, the empty nest stage jars our senses at first. To make it through those first weeks, we review photos and videos of earlier times with our youngsters. These remind us how clever, inventive, and cute they were. Thankfully, human parents have late teen and early twenty years when kids are out more than they are in to prepare for a future where only adults occupy the house.   

Seeing that great-horned owl and her nest progress from egg -laying to ready-to-fledge time has triggered a flood of memories about raising our girls. To compound these emotional flashbacks is the fact our eldest and her husband are experiencing the infant and toddler years with their two little ones. Between my watching these escapades through grandmother eyes and snapping weekly photos of maturing owlets, reminiscences of early parenthood invade my mind every time it wanders.

In February and early March, that owl momma attended her incubating eggs obsessively. Once they’d hatched, she’d fluff her feathers and spread wings wide to keep her babies toasty on frosty mornings. As weeks passed, I observed two downy heads peeking over the edge of the nest under momma’s watchful golden eyes. Eventually, days grew warmer and growing babies’ feathers filled in.

 As the nestlings matured, they crowded their home. Eventually, Mom ventured out to forage. I’d spy her leaving her young, who now occupied the entire bowl of their treetop home, gazing after her as she swooped low over the prairie searching for rodents.

Lately, her babes are often alone when I drive by. If that mom is anything like a human mother, she enjoys this freedom. While she’s hunting, her children mind the boundaries of their world, but like their human counterparts, it seems they inch closer to the edge every time I pass. The other morning, one daredevil stood on the lip of its nest, stretching developing wings.

One day soon, momma owl will come home to find her nest empty. I wonder if she’ll be as surprised as I was to discover my young had left home. Do owls reconsider their time management since the need to feed and clean up after offspring has ended? Will she soon perch atop power poles as she did last fall?

Whether human or critter, parenting cycles follow predictable patterns. For a time, babies tie mommas close to home with barely a moment to go to the bathroom alone. Slowly but surely, little ones mature, freeing parents from total dependency. In what seems like a flash, those youngsters develop until they’re ready to live on their own, leaving behind parents to figure out what to do with that extra time and space.

I guess we know what I did with mine. I started owl watching and telling you what I saw.

Imagine Going into Battle with a Song as Your Weapon

If you tune into the news, you’ll see people and nations disputing boundaries. These disagreements may involve guns, artillery, and bombs, or they may be legal wars that wind their way through courtrooms for years before anyone gets a definitive answer regarding who owns what. Since the beginning of time, humans have wrangled over property lines. After watching two male cardinals duke it out last week, I’ve decided people ought to settle their differences the way birds do—with song.

As a kid, I thought birds sang because they were happy. When I grew up, I learned they generally sing to attract mates or to establish and defend territory. Scientists who study such behaviors can tell you exactly how many tunes an individual species sings. According to one observer, brown thrashers produce 2,000 different songs while the Henslow sparrow has a repertoire of only one. That’s a lot of watching and recording to determine what’s going on in the bird world. 

In North America, we hear mostly male birds because they typically initiate courting behavior and establish or defend territory. Researchers discovered that playing a recording of another male house wren’s song triggers hostile behavior in listening wrens. They also know that if they remove these guys from their native habitat and play recorded territorial songs, a transplanted bird rarely invades the new region. The other fella’s melody establishes clear boundaries without bloodshed or violence.

Recently, I saw this in action. While rambling about town, I heard competing cardinals calling back and forth across a street. I’ve wanted to photograph these scarlet beauties so I stopped to look for the source of the racket. One chap hid among the leaves of a tall tree while his opponent clung defiantly to a wire strung between telephone poles as they hurled insults back and forth. 

As I watched, their volume increased. If bird body language is anything like that of humans, the creature on the line was agitated. He wanted that other guy GONE. I observed their trilling for five minutes until I realized their duel could go on all day. I returned the next morning to see if the warbling warriors were still sparring, but silence reigned over the neighborhood. The feud ended without a single casualty.

While I finished that morning stroll, I had much to consider. What if humans sorted out their differences through song? Would folks like me who can’t carry a tune but possess a loud voice have an advantage? Would others give in to shut us up? Maybe the contest would be like TV shows where celebrities declare a winner.

In the human world, I’m sure a third party would settle the issue, but I’m uncertain whether scientists know how birds determine a victor. They only know that birds select mates and settle territorial conflicts through song. 

It makes me wonder what John Lennon thought about as he wrote these lyrics, “There’s nothing to kill or die for” in his song “Imagine.” Perhaps he too watched birds settle differences by trilling memorable tunes and imagined settling disputes without violence.