Sometimes there are odd coincidences in life. Yesterday I checked out a science-fiction novel from the Estacada Library, New Earth, by Ben Bova. In the first chapter Bova describes the world centuries from now, awash in flood waters during a second period of global warming. In St. Louis, the famous Gateway Arch stands in many feet of muddy water. Last night, Lara and I watched an episode of The Last Ship that takes place in St. Louis, where the Gateway Arch is featured prominently in a couple of scenes. I hadn’t thought about the arch in years, and then it pops up twice in one day.

Dates Lymp was mentioned in Milt Fox’s article in The Mountain Times last month about the Chuckwagon Breakfast at the Lion’s Club (which was delicious, by the way). Dates, aka Joseph Fidelis Lymp, was a colorful character who lived on The Mountain for many years; he died in 2003. Just days before seeing that mention of Mr. Lymp, I had mentioned him to a friend during a conversation about colorful characters in our area. I hadn’t thought about the Dates in years.

Lara and I enjoyed our visit to Estacada. Checked out the beautiful library, wandered around the Wade Creek Vintage Marketplace, which is packed with antiques and assorted doodads and had a very nice lunch and an excellent IPA at Time Travelers Brewing. We gawked at the art at the Spiral Gallery, and bought some berries and veggies at the town’s farmer’s market. We also visited Mossy Rock Gifts/Nature Shop, where I bought a greeting card featuring a beautiful screech owl. Lara said, “who’s that for?” I shrugged and said, “Hoo knows?” I might send it to her—she loves owls. Mossy Rock Gifts has lots of owl-themed merchandise.
Our last stop on our Saturday outing was Milo McIver State Park, where we walked about five miles along the Clackamas River and through the woods on a ridge above. On the Maple Ridge Trail, Lara stopped and said, “I think I hear an owl!” She had. Three of them: an adult barred owl and two fledglings with most of their adult feathers. The mom or dad had a rodent in its beak for the kids. We watched the owls as they peered back and hissed at us from trees 50 to 100 feet away, their big dark eyes following our every move. This owl encounter was the highlight of the day, especially for Lara, who hadn’t seen a barred owl before.
So on the day after our owl sighting, I sat down to write this and, before getting started, noticed a post on the Nextdoor website from a local resident who had photographed a large bird in her bird bath. Yep, it was a barred owl.

I’ve seen barred owls in our area a few times. They’re magnificent critters. Adults stand 16 to 20 inches tall and have wingspans of 39 to 43 inches. Cornell University’s All About Birds web site has more information and recordings of their “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” calls. (allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/overview).

Barred owls are cousins to the Pacific Northwest’s iconic Northern Spotted owl, which was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1990. You may recall the “timber wars” of the 1990s and the Northwest Forest Plan, the result of an effort by President Bill Clinton’s administration to end the protests over the effects of logging on the spotted owl and other species that inhabit older forests. The result was a dramatic reduction in timber harvesting on National Forests and other federal lands in the region. The plan remains controversial to this day. Many communities that had been reliant on jobs in the woods and mills suffered severe economic hardships and haven’t fully recovered.

What of the spotted owl? Despite the limits on logging in its habitat, the bird’s population has continued to decline, due to two main factors: one is wildfire. In 2020 alone, the Labor Day fires burned about 360,000 acres, or more than 560 square miles of spotted owl nesting and roosting habitat in Oregon — an area nearly four times the size of Portland.

The other factor: barred owls. In 2021, researchers with Oregon State University and other institutions reported that, “despite more than 30 years of protection, northern spotted owl populations have continued to decline, with steepest declines observed in the past 10 years. Long-term monitoring of spotted owl populations across the species’ range identified rapid increases in the population of invasive barred owls as a primary reason for those declines.”

Barred owls are relative newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. The species has long been common in the eastern US and Canada, but has gradually expanded its range westward. They reached Oregon in the 1970s. Since then, they have increasingly competed with northern spotted owls for territory and have moved south into California and the range of a subspecies, the California spotted owl.

Barred owls have advantages over the somewhat smaller spotted owls: they are aggressive and have been known to drive spotted owls from their territories, and sometimes physically attack and injure or kill them. In addition, while spotted owls prefer dense older forests with large trees, barred owls inhabit a wide variety of forest types. The barred owls at Milo McIver State Park seemed perfectly happy in the relatively young, open forests of bigleaf maple and cottonwood. The many large conifer stumps in the park testify to the area’s history of logging in the early 1900s.

From 2009 to 2019, the US Fish & Wildlife Service conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of barred owl removal on spotted owl populations. In four study areas in older forests in Washington, Oregon, and California, hunters were hired to kill barred owls. Not surprisingly, the agency found that removing barred owls had a strong positive effect on survival of spotted owls. A wider removal program is now under consideration.

Is killing one species that threatens another with extinction justified? In this case, because the northern spotted owl is listed under the Endangered Species Act, and the barred owl isn’t, the powers that be are required to take action.

I think —I hope — the owl family at Milo McIver State Park will be safe, as will others outside of national forests and other federal lands. They are beautiful creatures.

Have a question about barred or spotted owls? Know what you call a barred owl with no feathers? Let me know. Email: SWilent@gmail.com.