Owling

Old Photo

 Alan spotted a Barred Owl up near the old pasture gate a couple times this week. I tried for it yesterday morning but was tied up with the holiday and I guess I didn't get out there early enough to encounter it.

Today rain was predicted so I didn't have much hope of a good chase. However when I got up there was just a tiny bit of frozen stuff coming down....little ice pellets that you could  barely see in the light from the headlamp.

The air was still. My breath curled around my head like smoke from a gentle campfire. It was about as quiet as it gets, what with all the trains and the Thruway so near, so I knew if there was something to hear I would hear it.

It is different out there in the dark, even with a good flashlight and a handy-dandy headlamp. Derelict milkweed pods look like something left behind by an alien spaceship. Dried goldenrod gleams ghostly, rimed by a thin coating of frost that will melt soon in the coming rain. Even the White-throated Sparrows that hit the feeder every day before dawn are still sleeping.

I climbed up about as far as where the old 892 chopper went to die. All was quiet. I played a little bit of hooting and hollering on my phone....and instantly there it was, off in the heifer pasture woods, a female solicitation call, clear as the lights of the town across the river. It went on calling as long as I stood there and most of the time it took me to walk back down the hill to the barn...but never when I was trying to record it.

And there you have it, one more thing for which to be thankful (and there are many).

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, as did we, what with kids and grandkids in and out all day, and a terrific meal, which everyone tall enough to reach the counters helped prepare. Happy Owlidays from all of us at Northview to all of you everywhere. And hugs...lots of hugs.