Bird Trouble

We’ve had some bird trouble lately. I suppose it is to be expected out here in the country.

Today’s bird trouble is very sad and tragic, because it involves a wild bird. Not just any wild bird, the most majestic and special of them all: an owl. Tonight we are mourning the loss of the owl. Steve said it will give him nightmares– he’s second-guessing his actions and wishing he’d realized before it was too late that it was an owl, and what kind of trouble it was in, before he shot what he thought was a skunk or raccoon out to get our chickens, and out during the day (which suggests rabidity).

Last night Steve heard “a large creature” near the chicken pen rooting around and making some noise. It was pitch dark and he didn’t have a flashlight, so he shut all the chicken doors (pen and coop) and hoped for the best.

But this morning, when the creature was still there, he got serious. Whatever it was– raccoon? skunk? It shouldn’t be hanging around there and might be tunneling under the coop. It was still nearly dark at 7:15 a.m. He came inside, got his pistol and shot it.

And only then did he realize it was a bird, a big bird. It shouldn’t be stuck down there struggling under the pine tree either. But on closer inspection, he could see it was a large brown owl, and its leg had been caught in a trap. Look at that beautiful wing. We also knew this owl, sort of. We had seen it perched in a dead tree by the pond, about 30 feet away.

The trap was sizable, and not set by anyone we know– certainly not anyone on the farm. Steve tends to set basket traps to capture the occasional skunk that is tearing up the commons or his seedling area. Those pests also suffer a gunshot. But they are pests. No one would shoot an owl on purpose.

Steve went to work right after letting the chickens out, so it was late this afternoon when we went to inspect the owl. He did the right thing– its leg was nearly severed and it had been struggling for at least twelve hours out there. Trying to take it to a rescue would have been dangerous– it is a big creature with one set of talons intact and I doubt we could have gotten it anywhere safely. Still, as the evening wore on, he second-guessed, we both did. If only he’d thrown a bag over it, maybe gotten it into a box that way, we could have taken it to the Pecks, a couple who might have saved it.

It is hard to blame a guy leaving for a landscaping job at 7:30 and returning home at 5:30, just to turn around and be at a pitch meeting for a prairie project from 7-9 p.m. Before going to sleep with nightmares of owls.

Meanwhile, Fred is not doing well. Several weeks ago I thought Fred was carried off by a hawk in a daytime capture, but it turned out it was one of the other chickens– both my white-breasted chickens were still around. But now Fred, clearly Fred, is losing all her feathers! She has not been cast out by the other chickens, and watching them eat and move around it is clear they are not pecking her. What is most likely is that she has mites (not keeping up on your dirt baths, Fred??) or lice. After some research, the plan is to clean and disinfect the coop, and sprinkle Fred liberally with a chemical that is made specifically for poultry (or for vegetable plants! Reading that and those instructions– it is very toxic to humans and children should not be in any distance where they could inhale it! Why would you put that on your veggie plants??)

Right now she looks like she had a very bad moult. It’s particularly bad on her neck and around her butt (even as a chick, she didn’t keep it clean down there, which is how she got her name and bad reputation). The other chickens, which have put on their full winter plumage, are twice her size. It’s just pathetic and really difficult to see. The hope is that with treatment and some extra protein in her diet she will grow back enough feathers to survive the winter. The idea of her freezing to death in the barn is really more than I can face.

I hate to say it, but I’ve been fantasizing and thinking very seriously lately about trying to shoot a pheasant. There are four males who have been hiding out every morning right in our front yard in the prairie grass. Then they move quite boldly to the commons area and on to the prairie behind the house. They squawk all day, tempting me. We don’t need that many males, and I love pheasant stew— marinating the meat in wine for two days then cooking it a few hours with garden veggies. I haven’t gone out there yet– I don’t actually know how to shoot our rifles. Though I have shot a .22 rifle once at a shooting range– on a Super Bowl Sunday in Chicago in the late 1990s with my dear departed friend Rocco. If Steve would go hunting with me, I could learn.

So, birds. They break your heart just like all the other critters. They take your breath away. You raise them for the eggs or meat and fall in love with them. And here we are. And with guns, and critters, and dark, life is less simple. There are terrible tragedies.

I just keep thinking of the opening of Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Hurt Hawks”

I’d sooner– except the penalties–kill a man than a hawk.

I looked up the rest: in the end he shoots the hawk, but not before trying to save it…

II

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk;
but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.

We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.

I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
What fell was relaxed, Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.