i took this photo several days ago. we were returning home from picking up our daughter at camp in northern minnesota, and saw something bulky and feathered lying in the middle of an entrance ramp on our right. it was nearly the size of a wild turkey but with totally different coloring.  we turned around at the next exit, just to return and get a glimpse, and in the end, the episode justified my habit of keeping sheets of white paper in the back of my car. i know some of you are probably getting weary of photos of dead birds, but i don’t know when i will ever get this close to a juvenile great horned owl again in my lifetime. i think it is a juvenile because of the underdeveloped blood feathers that make up part of its tail, and because i don’t know if an adult would ever be so careless as to get in the way of a car on a highway entrance ramp. the feet were not so much feathered as furred, like a snowshoe hare armed with four incurving talons. i can’t get the image out of my mind. a bird, but on a different scale. in life and in death, magnificent and silent.

great horned owl

on the freeway between ely and cloquet, minnesota