Art and Photo Presentations from All-Creatures.org

(Artwork - 241)
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus scalariventris)

Starting around age 8, I was a museum brat, continuing through my teens into adulthood, spending an inordinate amount of time in the department of ornithology. The department was headed by Lester L. Snyder (1894 – 1968), always “Mr. Snyder” to me, and while I saw him as a gruff, no-nonsense authority figure, only as I matured could I appreciate his kind patience in allowing me so much access to museum collections and books and journals, agog with all things to do with birds.

Mr. Snyder discovered that a large population of Great Horned Owls from northern Ontario and adjoining Quebec where a little different from others of their kind, this being a species with a massive range from the northern subarctic tree line south to Tierra del Fuego. And when I was about 18 he published an account of the bird, naming it as a subspecies.

To put things very simply, the scientific name of organisms consists of two words, the first, in this case Bubo, indicating the genus (genus meaning, essentially, a group of one or more species more closely related to each other than to any other species) and the species name, in this case virginianus, meaning of or from Virginia, as that is where the species was first discovered, although we now know it if found over most of North and Central America, and much of South America. But when the species can be divided into two or more subpopulations that can interbreed where they meet, those subpopulations are given a distinct third name. In the case of the ones from where the species was first described, the species name is simply repeated, thus one subspecies of the Great Horned Owl (which nests where I live, near Toronto) is Bubo virginianus virginianus, or B. v. virginianus for short. Mr. Snyder named his subspecies B. v. scalariventris, the third name meaning “scaled on the underside”, a reference to the scale-like appearance of the bird’s breast and abdomen.

Ah, but then the scientific community largely rejected the subspecies for reasons that may have to do more with academic elitism than scientific objectivity, as described by my friend, the late, greatly missed Ron Pittaway (1947 – 2023), in his essay, found here. I strongly recommend that you read it. I think Ron was right. I have looked at all the same specimens and can see, clearly, that B. v. scalariventris warrants full subspecific status as much as do the other subspecies. The painting, dedicated to the memory of L. L. Snyder, imagines a nest of S. v. scalariventris somewhere in the boreal forests several hundred kilometers north of where I live.

Finally, just for fun, I have attached photos of two much earlier paintings of Great Horned Owls, each a different subspecies. The first shows B. v. subarcticus, the pale northern form which also can show up in Ontario. When I was a kid the subspecific name was wapacuthu, a name I loved, but for technical reasons as mentioned in Ron’s article, it was changed to the more prosaic subarcticus. The third is the nominate race, B. v. virginianus, and that is the one I’m most familiar with, characterized as having more reddish in the plumage.

The newest painting is approximately life size, in oils on wood and about 36 by 24 inches.

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