Marky’s Most Wanted Photos: The Great Gray Owl

The Great Gray Owl had been atop my most wanted bird list for a while now. The majestic, elusive predator is incredibly rare back where I hail from in New England. Ironically, one famous — or infamous — GGO was a long-term visitor in Rowley, MA back in ‘96 on a street that would become my home a quarter century later. Hundreds of birders flocked to see it from far and wide, eventually miffing the residents of old Hillside Street. Photographers even released mice in the field, which led to one shot that made the Boston Globe.

This leads to one reason why the Great Gray Owl is so hard to find today for most folks. It is marked as a sensitive species on eBird, the top birding resource most people rely on, which means sightings and their location are hidden from the public. There are only a couple handfuls of bird species fitting this category in the U.S., many of which are owls that are prone to…well, situations like the mouse-baiting one.

Well guess what? I still wanted to see one! And my westward voyage this past year gave me an opportunity to do so, as they are far more common in the northwest than the northeast.

While there are a few known locations you are more prone to see one — Jackson Hole & the Yellowstone area and the Sax-Zim Bog in Minnesota — you’ll still probably have your work cut out for you unless you have some local intel. And while I didn’t have local intel, I set out to find one on my trek to Glacier National Park in late September.

I parted ways with my dad after a couple of owl-less days in Yellowstone and began the seven hour trek northward to the top of Montana. I said I didn’t have intel, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t put on my detective hat to try and pin down a known GGO location in the area. This detective work included matching fenceposts from a couple of location-less GGO pics on eBird to Google Maps street view…yeah, I told you I wanted to see one.

I plugged the fence-laden street’s name into my directions and was set to arrive a little before sunset — prime hunting time for this bird. I pulled onto the bucolic side road in rural Montana, slowly creeping my way down it, scanning the trees and fences for the silent killer. And no, I don’t mean high blood pressure.

As I got to the final farm field on the street, a flash of gray was flying from the tree line towards the fences. Could it be this easy?!

Always keep your eyes on the landing

My heart was pounding from both high blood pressure and the Great Gray Owl, a double whammy of the silent killer. Looking for a rare bird, even one that had been seen by dozens of birders on that very day, often leads to disappointment.

“Did you see your bird?,” my mom will ask me as I return home from a “twitch”, as some birders call chasing after a rare bird. Probably at least half the time, my response is a dejected “…nope.”

But alas, here I was, in the Middle of Nowhere, MT, praying that the same owl that was maybe seen on some similar looking fences months beforehand would just happen to be hanging out there again when I showed up. And boy was it!

You’ve been out ridin’ fences for so long now. You know, from Desperado? Elaine’s boyfriend’s favorite song…

After birding in Essex County, Massachusetts my whole life, I know what a typical owl photoshoot consists of — a shitload of people. And hardcore owl photogs also happen to be the people hardcore birders hate. You wouldn’t believe the drama that unfolds when owl season comes around…

Meanwhile, I had an hour practically to myself (one interested passerby did join me for a minute, while the others were aloof to the giant bird and guy with the giant camera), watching the owl move up and down the fence posts and tree tops hunting. Candidly, this silent killer had an off-night when it actually came to killing, but it still put on quite a show.

With the darkness finally too much for my eyes and camera to overcome, I went into town, hit McDonald’s up for a couple of McChickens and headed a half hour further to my AirBNB near the gates of Glacier. I went back one other night during my stay, cruising up and down the road many a time, but no cigar (I don’t smoke them in my car, the smell sticks). No owl either.

So was that fateful evening with the beast a stroke of luck? I don’t think so, as Kevin McCallister would say. Just gotta check those fenceposts on Google Maps…