John Pepin, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Journal columnist

“Cold days and ice nights only, hard times for sure.” — Steve Forbert

Over the past few weeks, I have been taking brief nighttime trips outside the front door to take a good hard listen to the night. In these days of pestilence and quarantine, I have found these moments to be relaxing and rejuvenating.

I usually start out on the front steps, using the ear height above the yard to my advantage. However, I often end up walking down the steps to the landing where, away from the house, I am better able to hear from a wider space of the blackened sky.

Some nights, it’s no use trying.

The winds are whipping so hard there’s nothing I can hear but those swirling and whooshing sounds. Those outings are very short-lived.

The cold, still nights are the best. Sound seems to travel better then. When I do hear something, the sound seems amplified. The smallest noises jump, like a live crackling electric wire, out of the darkness.

Those are the times when I can hear deer pushing their feet into the snow, the movements of flying squirrels in the trees or the gentle nudging of the soft, white birch treetops.

Cold nights are also often when the stars seem to shine their brightest, especially during wintertime. On these early spring nights, the chorus of nighttime sounds continues to grow as each night passes.

The lake is still frozen over, except for small open areas of water along the shorelines or in places where creeks feed in.

Canada geese have been gathering on the ice at night, their honking and gaggling is easily identified. As the temperatures eventually begin to moderate, the nights will soon ring with the sounds of male wood frogs and spring peepers.

Depending how close to the water the listener is, the songs of the tiny peepers can be deafening, blocking out just about everything else.

Beginning a few nights back, I began hoping to hear the calls of owls. The sounds of these secretive and mysterious forest denizens are a delight to hear anytime.

However, at this time of year, the chances increase of hearing tiny saw-whet owls. This is when they are singing, announcing territories and looking for mates.

Last May, I happened to be out on a night listen when I heard the tell-tale continuous beeping sound — like that of a truck’s back-up alarm — of a saw-whet owl coming toward me from the tree-covered islands and far shores of the lake.

I enjoyed hearing it for several nights after that, but I never was able to see the bird.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have begun listening again in hopes of hearing and seeing a saw-whet. I’ve tried to increase my chances by playing a recorded call of their song and calls.

Nothing. Until about four or five nights ago.

I was standing on the landing not long after midnight, having just shut the front door behind me. I took a deep breath.

The absolute first thing I heard was a saw-whet owl singing from a long way off, but there it was just the same. Cool.

When I lived in California, I was leading a group of birdwatchers into the San Gabriel Mountains above Los Angeles. We could hear a saw-whet singing from the bottom of a canyon, several hundred feet deep.

I had an old portable cassette tape player with a saw-whet song on it. I instructed the group to sit on the ground, with flashlights turned out.

We sat beneath some low-hanging branches where a perching owl might decide to land and be seen easily, were it to respond to the tape-recorded song.

I placed the tape recorder on a bed of pine needles that covered the ground. The song was recorded on an endless answering-machine tape loop.

In just a few brief moments, the owl had flown up out of the canyon and moved in close to where we sat. It was singing continuously in response to the tape recorder.

I prepped the birdwatchers to be ready with their binoculars. I would switch on my flashlight hoping the owl’s bright yellow eyes would reflect from somewhere out there in the darkness.

I turned on the light and began casting its beam over those bare tree branches. There was no owl to be seen or heard. However, I took this as a good sign.

When owls respond to a call, they often will stop singing when they get in close. Another pass with the flashlight revealed an incredibly unlikely sight. The little saw-whet owl was perched on the speaker panel of the tape recorder!

I knew these owls were known to be approachable, but I never would have anticipated this. With my light trained, the group’s members got to get fantastic looks at something most had never seen before.

When I heard the owl from the porch, I recalled this incident in California. I tried playing a call, but the results were nowhere near as successful. The bird continued to respond, but never budged from its location way off out there somewhere in the darkness.

This same scenario was repeated a couple more times over the next few nights. On the evening before a tremendous dump of late winter snow fell over the landscape, I heard the owl singing closer to the house, but still a good distance away.

I walked down along the driveway, following the sound. When I got to the county road, I planned to walk the edge of the blacktop down toward the beeping sound. A barred owl had chimed in to make the experience even better.

I hadn’t gotten very far when a different sound hit my ears. It was honking geese flying overheard. Like a lot of birds, geese often migrate at night.

My ears followed their invisible flight from the southern part of the sky overhead north toward the ice-covered lake and beyond. Once the geese had passed, the sound of the saw-whet was gone.

I tried to coax it into singing again, serenading it with a recorded song, but it did not respond. I went back into the house and came out a couple hours later. Still nothing.

The snow and gusting winds kept me from hearing anything over the next couple of nights. Then, another star-studded masterpiece arrived. The temperature was hovering just below 30 degrees.

I opened the door and moved out onto the front porch.

If the night hadn’t been this quiet, I would never have heard a saw-whet singing so far back into the night I had to strain to hear it. The sound seemed to be coming from maybe as far as a mile away.

On this night, rather than chasing the sound, I preferred to just stand and listen. With my eyes closed the sound intensified but remained far off.

Often, when a saw-whet owl sings from a perch, the varying volume levels detected indicate the owl is moving its head from side to side. It’s so cool to hear that and to see it in my mind.

In the nights ahead, I’ll continue to look and listen for these little vampires, haunting the dense woods along the waters and marshes myself.

During the daytime, I’ll rap on the trunks of trees with flicker holes, hoping an owl now using the woodpecker nest cavity will pop its head out to look at me.

All the while, the distraction, the adventure and the fascination will engage and relax me over the days and nights ahead. At least for a little while.

Editor’s note: John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula. Send correspondence to pepinj@michigan.gov or 1990 U.S. 41 South, Marquette, MI 49855.