Bubo virginianus

The Great Horned Owl

For a couple of years I've shared my neighborhod with one of these. I lie abed at night and listen to his distinctive call. Sometimes it's as if he's just outside the window, other times his calls blend into the distant train whistles.

The stuttered one-two-three, one-two is as distinctive as Poe's Raven calling "nevermore."


I know he's out there (the biologists tell me it's a he, by his call), But outside, in the dark, I never see. And he hears me, and waits quietly.

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more.

-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

New evidence out of China indicate that birds are the direct living descendants of dinosaurs. I wonder what they sounded like. Did they call out into the night? And who heard them?

I awake to that sound, and feel a peace that soon brings sleep.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
...
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock