Up in the Pine - Great Horned Owl

Like most people, I have always had a fascination for owls. And, like most youthful birders, I spent hours searching for their roosts and nests.

Great horned owls range from the subtropics to the sub-arctic and may nest in palm trees or stunted spruce. But in my part of the world, their favourite haunts are in the big white pine groves. The tree is so named because of the whitish colour of the fresh cut wood.

The mature white pine forest is a world of solemn plumes of darkness. I located the good prospective groves by listening to the owls hooting at night or by scanning the forest floor for the regurgitated pellets of fur and bone. Owls tend to devour all of their prey, let the stomach sort out the digestible material, and cough up the remainder in sausage-shaped pellets.

I have spent such long periods of time gazing up into the pine trees that my neck would barely straighten and I would see the big pine boughs in my sleep. The owls were very hard to see, but the rewards of discovery are well worth the effort.

I have long admired the swinging shapes of oriental calligraphy and the bold, loose strokes of the abstract expressionist painters such as Kline and Soulages. Their art helped me to see my world with new eyes. Thus I saw the potential for my own art in the rhythmic dark environment of the great horned owl for which I had searched so often as a boy.