Eight years ago, when I first met Lillian I asked her to teach me all the things she knows about birds and plants. She is as good a North Dakotan as there is. The perfect North Dakotan, I have always said, is one who, to borrow a phrase, can see both the landscape’s sweep and the flower’s petal. That’s Lillian. She can identify almost all of the native prairie plants on our frequent hikes, and, in fact, her love of the prairie is often the reason for our hikes. She is an excellent birder with a long Life List, and can identify most species by their song or call, not just by sight. I told her early on in our relationship that if I had not learned plants and birds well in a year, she could push me off the edge of Bullion Butte.
For the record, she is a patient woman. She has not pushed me off the butte, but I have a long learning curve yet. And I work at it. Like this week. Her birding ListServ message this week said:
“There currently is a family group of five barn owls in Petersburg. I have permission from Joe and Lorie who live at ____ (yellow house) to post this information. Birders should check in with them or their next door neighbor to the west, who was also very helpful in showing us where two of the owls were roosting yesterday afternoon in a tree in her back yard. These two owls use this tree a lot as a roost spot, but of course no guarantee can be made that they will be there on a given day. And it should be added that since the young are flying well, the whole group could leave the area at any time.
“If not found in that tree, try walking the streets and alleys to the east and south of Joe and Laurie’s residence and looking carefully through every tree. Petersburg has many large, mature trees so finding one of the five owls can be a challenge . . . “
Isn’t North Dakota a wonderful place to live and know people? And meet new people? We met Lorie yesterday.
Monday, when we read this note on Lillian’s ListServ, we thought we ought to take a drive to Petersburg. Barn owls are a rare find in North Dakota. Not many people who have lived here all their lives have seen one. This would be a rare opportunity. Petersburg’s only about 3½ hours away. And the timing was good. I have an uncle about 40 miles up the road at Edmore who was having an 83rd birthday, and I don’t see him often enough, and he’s not in great health, and his youngest daughter, my cousin, was home from California, and I have not seen her in along while, so we could make it a twofur day by driving up and having birthday cake in the afternoon and looking for barn owls in the evening. Which is what we did.
We got an hour and a half with my relatives before they had to leave for Grand Forks, where my uncle today is seeing specialists for a “problem in his belly.” I’m pretty worried about that. He is a man of few words. I will talk to him, or more likely my cousin, tonight, to see what the diagnosis is.
We arrived in Petersburg about 5:30. Met Lorie. Owls have flown the coop but are still hanging out around town, best she knew. We went for a walk. Turns out we were not the only ones there for that reason. We were spotted by two young women in a tan sedan as we were walking down the street with our noses in the air, looking at the trees. No, they hadn’t spotted the owls yet, but were optimistic. We covered the less heavily forested west side of town on foot, then got into the car and started cruising the small streets and alleys, and sure enough, Lillian, she of the keen eye, stopped the car beside a copse of ash and elm trees and said quietly “There’s one.” He/she looked exactly as Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds described him/her: “Our only owl with a white heart-shaped face. A long-legged, knock-kneed, pale, monkey-faced owl. Dark eyes, no ear tufts . . .”
We were about 50 feet from the owl. We watched it carefully for a few minutes, and I got out my camera, and tried taking a picture through the sun roof of the Jeep. But there was a branch in the way. I asked Lillian if I could get out and get a picture. She said sure, so I crept around the back of the Jeep and walked toward it slowly. It was dozing, and did not seem afraid, and let me get within 25 feet for this photo.
To say it was a spectacular bird is understating it. I’m just going to stick with “very, very cool.” Then, deciding we had bothered it enough, and knowing there were others prowling about town, we let our stomachs lead us south on North Dakota State Highways 32, 45, 65 and 20, through the Sheyenne and James River Valleys in the golden glowing light of an early North Dakota fall evening, to the Buffalo City Grill in Jamestown where we celebrated with a fine meal of bison.
An addition to Lillian’s Life List (I say Lillian’s because she started it long before she met me, but I am claiming joint custody). One step further back from the edge of the butte for me. As fine a day as you could have in North Dakota. And there are a lot of fine ones.
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