Great Horned Owl

Young Great Horned Owl on Lamp Post

(Click on photo to view full size.)

The parents of the two young Great Horned Owls (see "Great Horned Owlets") have made themselves scarce, but the young ones are around most evenings.  This one was sitting on a lamp post in the front yard.  He (or she?) was looking in the other direction when I arrived and looked startled at first to see me, but seemed content for us to watch each other. 

Owl Peering

Barred Owl Peering

(Click photo to view full-size.)

The big barred owl outside the window was watching me from behind a veil of yellow raintree leaves. Be sure to view the full size photo to see the shine in his eyes.

Super Moon Rising

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While I was watching the moon from the upstairs porch, one of the Great Horned Owls who live on the property flew by and landed on the roof.  So for a while we were three: the moon, the owl, and myself.  It was lovely.

Blossoming with Egrets

Our large Southern Magnolia trees (Magnolia grandiflora) have been having a good year, decorated all over with magnificent white blossoms a foot wide.  But they sometimes seem to bloom with something else as well — with egrets. 

Here is part of a cattle egret flock that settled high in one of the magnolias:

(Click to view full size.)

Great Horned Owlets

This is one of the Great Horned Owlets that we have been watching grow up, ever since one of them fell out of the nest and we had a dramatic owl rescue.

We have learned that crows habitually harass owls, so one way of locating the owls is to listen for the crows.  Here is one of the young owls, older now and able to fly, high in a tree, staring at me and ignoring the crow.  We were told that it is very unusual for the owl and the crow to sit together companionably like this.

Please click on these photos to view them larger — and notice the owlet's big yellow eyes.  I have read that if Great Horned Owls were as large as human beings, their eyes would be the size of oranges.  (See the Nature Conservancy.)

The same young owl, this time with the full moon.

Owls mostly do not get good press in the Bible, but here is a passage from Isaiah portraying the owls as honoring God:

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
    the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
    the people I formed for myself
    that they may proclaim my praise.

(Isaiah 43:19-21)

Nature's Freshness

Dove in Nest

I was excited to notice a pair of doves building a nest right outside my bedroom window.  Unfortunately they didn't share my excitement at being so close to me, as I was constantly opening the curtain to peer at them, positioning the camera to take pictures.  They have now moved to quieter lodgings.

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," writes Gerard Manley Hopkins in "God's Grandeur."  But sometimes this freshness requires being undisturbed.  How much longer will we be able to say, with Hopkins, that "nature is never spent"?

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Faithful Witness

Moon Rising Behind Bare Branches

Psalm 68 calls the moon a "faithful witness in the sky."  Amid all the uncertainties of our world, she keeps rising and setting.  She waxes and wanes and waxes again.

(This photo, taken March 2, is of a waning moon.)

Far more faithful than even the moon is the love of God toward us.

Thy steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
    thy faithfulness to the clouds.

(Psalm 36:5) 

Keep Thou My Feet

Louisiana Fog

(Click on photo to view full-sized.)

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

- Blessed John Henry Newman

Hawks in My Life

(Click to view full size.)

There have been hawks in my life the past couple of years.  This one was recently outside my window, sometimes watching me, sometimes ignoring me.  For others:

• Dignity and a Splashing Hawk 

• A Visitation of Hawks

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all!
(Psalm 104:24 )

Oil Spill

Pensacola Beach Before Gulf Oil Spill
Pensacola Beach with its sugar-white sand and turquoise water

The following is a brief letter I sent to the President of the United States:

Dear Mr. President:

Human life – indeed all life on earth – is dependent on the health of our oceans. While it is true that the best and latest technology can reduce the dangers involved in off-shore drilling, it is also true that no technology is fail-safe. Besides that, we can never eliminate the risk of human error, human greed, or simple human sinfulness in any venture, especially one in which huge amounts of money are at stake.

Please… no more off-shore drilling for oil. The risks to all of us are just too great.

Yours truly...

All Beautiful the March of Days

Florida Fall Leaves

Leaves are beginning to turn here in North Florida. They will not reach their peak until sometime in December — but note that by "peak" I'm not talking about New England color. The change of seasons is much more subtle here, and if we are not paying attention, the reds of fall can be overpowered by the green that is always with us.

Nevertheless, the leaves remind me of the hymn by Frances W. Wile that begins,

All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go;
The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow...

Although it is highly unlikely that we will see "the crystal of the snow," our understated autumn still speaks of the loveliness of God, "from Whose unfathomed law the year in beauty flows."

Summer Sky

Summer Evening Sky
(Click to view full-sized.)

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples,
and I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

(Psalm 108:3-4)

Lavish in Detail

Yellow-crowned Night Heron by Intracoastal Waterway

If you click on the photo to view it full sized, you will see the intricacies of the heron's feathers. Then gaze on the edge and the patterns in the huge sycamore leaf which dwarfs the bicycle seat on which it is resting.

Dry Sycamore Leaf on Bicycle

Whether in a bird's feathers or a leaf or the double helix of DNA, nature is not parsimonious where detail is concerned.

Lord, how thy wonders are displayed,
where'er I turn my eye,
if I survey the ground I tread,
or gaze upon the sky!

Isaac Watts, "I Sing the Mighty Power of God"