Cry, They Are Called

In old-growth forest, a more-than-human mythology finds refuge

If you want to meet the spotted owl, it turns out, you’re going to need a few mice.

Steve Ackers, the wildlife scientist who leads the owl demography study in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Western Cascades, offered to take me on a daytime visit to one of the nesting sites he tracks. The project isn’t tracking every spotted owl in the region — although it probably gets close — but instead uses known nesting sites to sample the population. They’ve…