Today when I passed the nest at sunset a parent and the baby were in it both looking down at me. I saw the parent first. Solidly staring as my eyes sorted through the branches and leaves to find them, waiting for me it seemed.
I wasn’t sure if the lump next to it was a baby, but slowly I made out the ghostly visage—so surprising was the face of the baby! Looked sort of like a goblin-y skull of a human with eyes. Last time the baby saw me the parent wasn’t there so it quickly pulled its head down. Now with the parent there, it didn’t pull its head down but only looked at me a short time then kept burying its head into its parent’s fluffy neck, like a shy child in the presence of a strange adult, and the parent held my gaze with such solidity that eventually I became almost embarrassed and walked away with such a smile emanating from my being. Pup seemed so pedestrian then, with his predictable sniffing and regular body.
That was my first time ever seeing an owl chick other than the time it pulled its head down. They really do look eerie. No feather horns yet like its parent. Floofy white down feathers on its head but I saw it nervously rustle its wings which already had big flight feathers. It was half the size of its parent. I think there’s only one chick.
I used to do wildlife rehab and I would see the bird chicks in the incubators, mostly sparrows and scrub jays and crows, never saw an owl but sometimes a hawk chick. And that was thrilling, for sure.
But seeing the chick and parent in their habitat, doing their own life—me the peeping Tom, but maybe they’re letting me in as a gift… has a healing effect on me. Hard to quantify. Has to do with connection. And something much much bigger than politics, than history, than science, than podcasts, than psychology even, I think. It’s so primal. Like a kind of brain reset.
In that string of moments, I’m with them and they’re with me, in a very limited way but a very real way. Pure, authentic. The way the parent, driven by hormones and the force of all evolution, to bring forth life in that chick, mouse after mouse after mouse brought back to it—the way that parent stared at me, unapologetically, pure vitality, buffets my soul somehow.