Superb Owl Sunday 2026
No owls for us this year, but a pleasant trip down Memory Lane.
(Listen to the radio version here.)
Ever since the 1990s, I’ve gone out looking for owls on one particular Sunday in February when many other people are setting out chips and guacamole in anticipation of a football game. Russ has been along with me on all of my favorite Superb Owl Sundays, but he couldn’t always make it—when our kids were little and then when his mom was living with us after she developed dementia, it was usually better for him to stay home, though one of our best Superb Owl Sundays ever was while she was living with us during my Big Year in 2013. We couldn’t be gone long, so we just went up to Two Harbors, but we found both a Northern Saw-whet Owl (well, Jim Lind told us where to look) and a Boreal Owl—the one that gave me my best photo op EVER.
It’s only been in recent years that I’ve become somewhat reliable reporting my birds on eBird, but in checking my eBird records over the years, I’ve noted six different species of wild owls on Superb Owl Sunday and taken at least one photo of each of them.
Snowy…
…Northern Hawk…
…Barred…
…Great Gray…
…Boreal…
…and Northern Saw-whet.
Of course, the owl I’ve seen most often on Superb Owl Sundays wasn’t wild—it was the Eastern Screech-Owl I lived with for 17 years as my licensed education bird.
Oddly enough, I don’t think I ever took a photo of Archimedes on any of those 17 Superb Owl Sundays—I’m afraid I took him for granted even as I vaguely remember marking the occasion at least a few times by telling him what a superb owl he was.
Russ is my good luck charm as far as seeing owls. He was along for my very best Superb Owl Sunday, in 2019, when we saw four different species. I’ve also seen a shocking number of my lifer owls with him, beginning with the very first Snowy Owl I ever saw, on December 18, 1975, when we were walking along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The bird flew just above the sidewalk straight toward us, and just before it passed overhead, its eyes met mine. An electric surge passed through me that I’ve never forgotten.
In late afternoon on January 29, 1976, Russ drove a friend and me to a farm outside the Michigan State campus to see three lovely Short-eared Owls hunting.
Russ was not only present but got a photo of my lifer Long-eared Owl on May 2, 1976.
My good friend Randy Hoffman took me to see my lifer Barred Owl near Madison, Wisconsin, on May 7, 1978, but a year or two earlier, Russ and I saw our first not-quite-real Barred Owl together at the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago—it turned out to be just a tree limb with knot holes exactly where the owl’s eyes would have been. We looked at it from a few angles before reality intruded. Tragically, that was before I was taking photos. I also don’t have a picture of what I thought was a Burrowing Owl at a prairie dog town in South Dakota. I led Russ and the kids closer and closer—so quietly and slowly—until I realized it was a little weird that it hadn’t moved at all. Oops—it was a pile of buffalo dung!
On December 23, 1978, Russ and I saw my lifer Barn Owl and Northern Saw-whet Owl both on the grounds of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and he got photos of both.
I think my favorite lifer moment was on January 30, 1982. Our first born baby was just 3 months old when Kim Eckert called to tell me a Great Gray Owl was sitting on a fence on Lester River Road, a couple miles from my house! So Russ and I headed there with the baby. The fence was just on the other side of the roadside ditch, nice and close, so after I’d enjoyed it, we pulled Baby Joey out of his car seat and held him to the window. I’ll never forget how he smiled and giggled to see the owl—they were both looking at each other. But we didn’t get a photo.
In April that same year, we took a vacation in Southeastern Arizona with Joey, where we saw an owl on the opposite end of the size spectrum—an Elf Owl. And again, Russ got a photo!
It was too dark for him to get a photo of the Whiskered Screech-Owl that we heard and got a glimpse of the next night.
So Russ has seen 8 of my owl lifers with me, and has seen 15 of the 19 regularly-seen American owls with me, including some real live Barred and Burrowing Owls. That’s a darned good track record for someone who still calls himself a non-birder.
We couldn’t get away from home for very long this year on Superb Owl Sunday, and we ended up getting skunked, at least as far as real owls go, but we at least saw three different owl decoys. One was too far off along a busy road for me to photograph it, but I got one at Superior High School…
…and another by one of the refineries in Superior.
Not seeing an owl on Superb Owl Sunday is sort of a bummer, but any time you go birding you’re going to see something. There have been a Barrow’s Goldeneye and a Harlequin Duck hanging out with a big flock of Common Goldeneyes in Canal Park here in Duluth, and so we ended our outing looking for them. When we arrived, they were both on the far side of the shipping canal. I picked out the very distant Harlequin Duck among the goldeneyes pretty quickly.
It took long minutes of searching to finally see the Barrow’s Goldeneye, and then suddenly something inspired all the goldeneyes to swim closer. By then the Harlequin Duck had gone behind the breakwall on the far side, but I got some of my best pictures ever of the Barrow’s Goldeneye.
So despite the day being short on owls, it was a jolly good outing with the “founder of the feast”—the guy who told his mom to get me my first field guide and pair of binoculars way back in 1974. I got a crush on him on high school registration day, over 60 years ago—it’s nice that some things never change.
Scrolling through my emails while I'm watching the SUPER BOWL, and of course, your fun titled email caught my eye! Happy New Year, Laura. I hope all is well with you on this Superb Owl Day!