I've seen a Snowy Owl!

The call goes out: a Snowy Owl at Stratford Point. Not much more than a 20-minute drive away. Grab binoculars, camera, car keys, jump in car. Frank Gallo gives me directions to this place I've been a million times before but of course can't remember how to get to. He's giving exceptionally good directions, but to me it sounds like: words, words, diner, turn left, words, words, airport, other words, more words -- what is wrong with me? Anyone who gives me directions may as well be talking in Abyssinian. I know that even once I've plugged the street address into the GPS, I will still get lost. Now why is everyone suddenly obeying the speed limit? It's un-American. Why won't that giant SUV get out of the overtaking lane? What the hell is that guy in the giant Cadillac tank-boat-thing with Tennessee license plates actually doing? Certainly not driving. I take a wrong turn. Yes, even with the GPS. Somehow I get there. Step out of car. Cell phone falls out of pocket onto pavement, falls into more pieces than I realized a cell phone consisted of. The bird is astonishing. It's just sitting there, 20 yards away from a knot of birders, napping, occasionally opening its eyes and swiveling its head, absorbing the warmth of the rocks. I get that dissociated feeling you get when you're in the middle of an accident that's unspooling right before your eyes: It's happening, yes, it's happening, but somehow it's not happening; you're registering it all from a distance. All this time -- more than three decades -- and here I am, face to face with this creature. It's head is so rounded, so boofy -- somehow I only fully notice this now, being able to watch it turn that head. And there are barely perceptible ear tufts, fluffing up now and then in the wind, which always blows cold and hard out at Stratford Point. Thank you, Scott Kruitbosch, for finding this beauty today, and Frank Mantlik, for setting up his scope so I could get a good look!

Raptor beauty

Raptors have an other-worldly quality: Finely tuned hunting machines, they have skills that are so foreign to me as a human. I saw the White-tailed Kite just as we pulled up at Stratford Point late one day this week. It was flying right above us, and as I jumped out of the car, it began hovering high over the tall grass. To me, it was a beautiful display of raptor skill. To an unsuspecting vole, it was a Very Bad Thing Indeed. The bird scooped its wings back and forth oh so quickly through the air, staring at the ground, then swoop, it plummeted down like an arrow . . . and shot back into the air, a limp vole clutched in its talons.

It looked like a precision tracking and killing machine for whom this was no effort at all. When I looked at its ghostly charcoal-rimmed eyes through my binoculars after it ate the rodent in the top of a tree, I could impart all kinds of perceptions, skills, talents to that bird. But these were just human fantasies that say more about the qualities I wish I had: It turned out that other people had been watching the bird hunting unsuccessfully for hours, lucklessly scouring the fields for prey. We just happened to arrive at its moment of glory. To the kite, catching a vole was no spectacular aerobatic feat, just an act of basic survival. It just looked so much more impressive than when I cruise the aisles of the supermarket.

Incredible photos thanks to Frank Gallo.

The Day of the White-tailed Kite

I just circled today's date in the calendar and named it The Day of the White-tailed Kite. This truly amazing bird was spotted at least a thousand miles from home, in Stratford Point -- the first documented sighting in Connecticut, and one of the only times it's been seen in all of New England. Who knows how or why this bird arrived, or how long it will stay -- it's normally found in Florida and the Gulf states, or on the West Coast and in some Southwestern states. It perched in a tree in the meadow, flew sorties around the point, and hovered searching for mammal snacks, looking to my eyes like some kind of predator angel.

These photos are by Frank Gallo, director of the Connecticut Audubon Society's Coastal Center at Milford Point -- a man who runs like the wind when there is a rare bird to be snapped.

The calls went out, the crowd soon gathered.