Under the brighter and larger-than-usual eye of the super, seasonal blue, and Sturgeon moon—the rare combination of characteristics of August’s full moon last week—I was having a conversation with a Barred Owl. I couldn’t see the remarkably keen-eyed predator, who was just out of my visual range in the deep and still-dark woods, but I’m sure the owl had no trouble whatsoever seeing me. The bird certainly could pinpoint my presence with a sense of hearing so acute that it could essentially “see” in complete darkness.
It would give a single, sharp, descending hoot, and I’d answer with the full, “Who hoots for you?” response. This went on for a while, a deeply, soul-satisfying while (for me, at least; I can’t speak for the spirit of that spectral Strix varia). As we traded the equivalence of over-the-fence gossip in the recently chilled air, I wondered if it saw the closer-than-usual, third of four full moons in a season — there are typically three, hence the “blue” designation — and fish namesake as anything out of the ordinary.
.. or simply as an astronomical and Native American amalgam of traits that might make its hunting life a bit more convenient, just as September’s harvest moon, which will also bear the super title, used to aid farmers, by extending the hours of daylight in the era before artificial illumination, in bringing in the sheaves, along with the silage corn and the rest of the produce.
All I could know for certain was there was a .