New year's owls

There was a coastal flood advisory along most of California’s shore during Christmas week. Rogue waves were sweeping people off their feet, inundating low-lying areas, unmooring parked cars, and causing massive swells up and down the coast (a boon for big wave surfers). There was even an alert that flooding might impact my route from the East Bay to Marin, where I was headed on New Year’s Eve Eve to take part in another Southern Marin Christmas Bird Count.

Though the forecast called for clearer skies, it was raining pretty hard as I made my way to Tiburon that Saturday morning. I worried it would be another soggy experience, but the clouds were parting by the time I met up with Susan’s team at Blackie’s Pasture to get the plan for the day.

One of the perks of participating in CBCs is getting to scope out some areas that aren’t usually accessible to the public. Highlights of tromping around the already stunningly beautiful Tiburon Peninsula were looking for birds along a private cove with a unique perspective of the Bay. A Bald Eagle soared overhead as what appeared to be thousands of cormorants flew toward the Golden Gate. Just as scenic was a stop at the all-access but somewhat deserted-seeming Romberg Tiburon Center. Brown Pelicans, more cormorants and a variety of gulls crowded offshore pilings foregrounded another postcard view.

When several of us came up the driveway from the Romberg Center, Susan, who’d been scouting birds in the wooded area across the street, told us she found an owl.

“Want to see?”

Of course!

We crept along the trail and looked up to see a very large, sleepy-eyed Great Horned Owl catching some Z’s on a tree branch, resting up for its next bout of hunting. Why is it so exciting for some of us to see an owl at rest? I’m not 100% sure I can answer that fully — wonder can be inexplicable — though I highly recommend taking a considered look at an owl (or most any bird!) when you can.

Which is why, a few days later, I went searching for another sleeping owl — this one a resident at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz— with my friend Sally. Kwame and I had come across it on a previous visit without much effort: The park puts signs up alerting visitors to be quiet when the owl is near with instructions on where to look, and we’d looked up to see the big, ball of fluff, perching silently in a Eucalyptus near one of the butterfly viewing platforms.

Not that I drove all that way just to see the owl. Visiting Santa Cruz is basically going home for me, a particularity of place that’s hardwired to my being even though there’s no home-home there for me anymore. So we booked a few days on the West Side where I could hear owl hoots and coyote yelps at night and we could work on a bunch of songs that have been accruing.

Kwame and I have co-written songs in all manner of ways over the years, but we tried something new over the past six months when he was traveling a lot for work, sending each other lyrics for the other person to write music to, and then sending the results back. It was more of an exercise, really, but it sparked some ideas that would have otherwise lay dormant, and we ended up with a stack of songs and starts of songs. So amid soaking up the Santa Cruz vibe, we critiqued and rated all the songs we had accumulated and came up with a batch of material we both liked enough to continue advancing.

New year, new sounds, process — let’s go!

Our song work done for the moment, Kwame went off to look at guitars and I caught up with Sally at an outdoor lunch spot across from Steamer's Lane. After the crazy strong few days of tides, the break looked relatively normal. After talk turned to birds, we decided to try to find the Natural Bridges owl.

Alas, no roosting owls were to be found this visit. There weren’t even any signs alerting us to its presence. We asked about it at the visitor center where the park ranger gave us more up-to-the-minute owl coordinates, directing us to a different corner of the park. We looked and looked through the tree branches but couldn’t find any large birds. It was starting to rain again, and I thought, owl or no owl, this is as close to home as I get: walking through the woods, sidestepping mud puddles with my oldest friend, just like we did when we were seven-year-olds.

Plus, amid all our searching, we did see thousands of the monarch butterflies who overwinter at the park, fluttering from the tree tops and hanging from branches in owl-sized clumps. Another wonder, and another case for looking up.