Fondren Library’s most recent Staff Recognition event had an an Owl Recognition element with the screening of videos taken by Jay Gillen of the screech owls roosting in the trees by the West entrance.  These have been very exciting owls, seen by numerous Library visitors and Rice people as well local Fox News station viewers.  Jay staked out the roost with a video camera on a tripod and caught the owls staring, vocalizing, preening, and falling asleep, as well as having plumage that looks remarkably like tree bark. According to OwlPages.com, “When threatened, an Eastern Screech Owl will stretch its body and tighten its feathers in order to look like a branch stub to avoid detection” – but these two have apparently decided that being detected by humans is OK given such lovely trees in which to roost.

Today I saw what I took to be a large flock of small birds way up in the sky under a cloud.  However, they weren’t  flapping their wings. It turned out to be a large flock of large birds:  a kettle of hawks.  There were a couple hundred hawks circling under the most handsome cumulus cloud in the sky.  Because the size of the kettle seemed to change – at one point the apparent number of hawks doubled – I think they were at cloud base with some of the kettle in and out of mist.  I’ve thermalled at cloud base in gliders and I know what it’s like.  The updraft holds you up with no effort at all, and the gray fringe of the cloud keeps you blessedly cool.  The hawks found a cloud-gray oasis in their fall migration across Texas.

Rice University alum and adjunct professor Robert Flatt has been photographing the Great Horned Owls on campus ever since a pair were discovered last March with babies in a nest in the trees behind what used to be the President’s House.  Mr. Flatt is a darn good photographer:  witness the Web page devoted to these owls.  Not only that but he has a book going to press with owl photos and remarks by Rice luminaries including President Leebron and former President Gillis.

The Rice Owls football team won a big game last weekend, half-grown owls have been adorably perching in the trees just outside the Library west entrance, and I wonder how many other university mascots naturally occur on campus? Cougars, mustangs, longhorns, Razorback hogs, tigers? No way. Yellow Jackets, Bulldogs?  Maybe, but flying wasps and roaming bulldogs are not exactly welcome on a college campus. Then there are the University of California – Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. The UCSC website says, The Banana Slug, a bright yellow, slimy, shell-less mollusk commonly found on the redwood forest floor, was the unofficial mascot for UC Santa Cruz coed teams since the university’s early years. The students’ embrace of such a lowly creature was their response to the fierce athletic competition fostered at most American universities.   In a  low-budget-sci-fi-movie-prop-ish way, banana slugs are as cute as fledgling owls.  Go owls and slugs.

With the prolonged drought, a lot of creatures are turning up inside buildings where they try to find shade and water.  Over the weekend we had a bat in the library.  It flew around creating much excitement.  “Bat!” “Bat!” “Where?!” “Over Current Periodicals!”  “There’s a bat!!!”

I’ve never gotten such a good look at a bat in flight. It was pointier than a bird, and absolutely silent in flight.  “Very good Library conduct to be that quiet,” my colleague observed.  We called Facilities, which said they’d send somebody over, whether with a net or not and whether to evict the bat or kill it they did not say.  As it turned out, a tall Library patron solved the problem with a borrowed sweater.  He swept the bat out of the air with the sweater, carried the bundled bat out the West door and unfolded the sweater on the sidewalk.  The poor frazzled bat lay there for a minute, panting and blinking in the sunlight.  Then it  levered up and flew off into the trees. I didn’t know bats could launch from flat on the ground. Way to go, bat!

What the pigeon in the planter on my porch and the eagle on the nest in the Decorah Fish Hatchery Eaglecam have in common:  settling down on the nest with exquisite care. The eggs or baby eagles are  ever so tenderly covered and cocooned.  The adult bird’s belly feathers look as soft and fringy as the underside of a cumulus cloud.  The pigeon even has cloud-bottom-gray feathers;  the eagle has brown underfeathers or, toward the tail,  pure white.

The pigeons are not happy with me. Well, I wasn’t happy when a second pigeon couple (or threeway or whatever it is they’re doing with all that cooing and cuddlng…) amassed twigs and leaves in the corner of the balcony. That is what passes for a pigeon nest, followed soon by eggs, followed by incredibly messy and increasingly numerous young. So I removed the twigs and leaves. The birds retaliated by laying an egg in the planter right outside my balcony window – all of four feet from my computer. Five days later – two eggs. So today I snatched the eggs at an untended moment, and hard-boiled them.  When I went to put the eggs back, the mom pigeon was back in position and all bunched up with tense suspicion that Something Was Wrong. I put the eggs back in the planter and used a (clean) paint-stirring stick to tuck the eggs back up under her. Seriously ruffled feathers ensued. But she’s still there with her feathers slicked back down. I’m pretty sure pigeons don’t really know the difference between a dud and a live egg. (But *I* know the difference between a garden balcony and a rookery and I prefer the former!)