The Great Snowy Owl Hunt

On Monday my friend Laura and I went for a snowy owl search at Duxbury Beach. This winter has seen a profusion of snowy owls finding their way to New England. Many of them have ended up at Boston’s Logan Airport–not the ideal place for an owl!–and they’ve been moved to other suitable locations in the area, fairly remote beaches with salt marshes and dunes. Laura had heard there were owls in Duxbury, so we decided to make our way there.

The day started out with a minor snafu that proved to be a blessing. I got lost driving through Duxbury and, drawing on vague memories of a previous visit years ago, made my way to the ocean by a different route than I’d planned to follow. The Duxbury reservation is a barrier beach, which means you had to cross a bridge to get to it. And this particular bridge was a single-lane wooden-railed bridge that looked more like a boardwalk. It hadn’t been cleared after recent storms, so it was a mass of rutted snow and ice. I grew up in the snowy Finger Lakes, so snow-rutted roads hold no terror. But a snow-rutted bridge? That’s alarming. My valiant little Hyundai Accent was up to the challenge and I made it across with white knuckles, but no actual issues.

The alarming bridge…and my heroic Hyundai

Only to find that the beach road was limited use seasonal access, unplowed, barely paved, and recommended for four-wheel drive vehicles only. (See Hyundai Accent.) Laura, who’d been coming from Boston, had taken a different bridge to the beach. I could see her distinctive orange SUV in the distance, but we were separated by a blocked-off section of road marked by a huge “CAUTION: SAND TRAP” sign. She had no parking where she was. I couldn’t get to where she was. Luckily, she had four-wheel drive and was able to circumvent the sand traps and get to me.

It was ridiculously cold with an icy wind blowing off the Atlantic, but so beautiful. Snow-covered dunes, the sound of surf, and all sorts of birds. The sky was glorious. The waves were wild. (And my camera ran out of batteries before I could get wave pictures, alas!)

Looking back toward Duxbury

We saw some waterfowl we need to identity, the bird in the picture below, and, we’re pretty sure, some snow buntings, another unusual visitor to the area, but no owls.

Can you identify him? Body bigger than a robin, tail shorter

We walked for about two hours, huddled in a warm car to eat a quick lunch, then discussed whether to continue looking. Since L had four-wheel drive, we decided to drive down the icy, rutted excuse for a road. Here we saw glorious views, more birds, more glimpses of waves, men hand-digging clams in the estuary, and, at the end of the road, a lighthouse and a surprising find: a gated community, all but abandoned for the season and splendid in its wintry isolation. But no owls.

So with a heavy heart we headed back toward my car and the bridge. Actually, that’s a lie. Our hearts weren’t heavy. We’d see interesting things, taken some good pictures, had a chance to catch up for the first time in months. But we’d really hoped to see an owl.

We were most of the way back to the parking area when we saw what we thought was a white stump or rock protruding from the dunes. There was a convenient place to pull over, so we checked it out with binoculars.

And found ourselves gazing into huge, solemn golden eyes.

I knew snowy owls were large, but this seemed unreal. Huge, magnificent, surely a messenger from some wilder world. This picture doesn’t do it justice. But it gives a sense of the size and majesty of the bird. Another birder chatted with us while we watched her–he confirmed it was female–and when she flew off on her great, silent white wings, he told us a story. He was a contractor who’d been working over the winter on a house in the gated community we’d seen. And in the course of that time, he’d taken over a hundred pictures of snowy owls–including some through the window of the house he was restoring. He shoots old-school, on film, with a thirty-year-old Canon and a long, long lens. He showed us some of the pictures. Magical!

Laura and I are talking about heading on another owl hunt if we have a chance, or going to watch for migrating hawks in the spring. And Duxbury Beach definitely merits another visit…although next time I may meet Laura and her SUV somewhere and leave the Hyundai for actual roads.

Photo by Laura Hayes