The Midnight Owl

Now, I know I'm getting a little obsessed about my birds, but, I can't help myself. I have been keeping our bedroom door open at night, ostensibly for the fresh air, but really because I'm so happy to hear the birds and other night creatures making all their comfortable little noises. (It's merely a pleasant side effect that those creature noises drown out most of the comfortable little noises that my own wee folk make). 

In daylight hours, we've continued to make strides in our bird watching. We've identified several new birds around the house - we've now got house finches, swallows, red-winged black birds, Anna's hummingbirds, black-headed grosbeak, nuttall's woodpecker, spotted towhee, starlings, california quail, sparrows, and of course our as-yet-unidentified hawks - and watched as the latest family of what we believe are house finches take flight. But in the past two weeks, we've not seen the family of hawks, though we still see it's nest off in the Eucalyptus grove in the canyon. So...

When a strange noise woke me up at 3 a.m. last night, I almost didn't think anything of it. But then nature called, and I was up. I thought the sound was so intriguing - clearly flying was happening outside, near the porch, as well as some heavy thumping (landings not so graceful as yet), and these odd, raspy cawing noises. I was expecting to see the hawks, so I peeked out the bedroom porch door, thankful for a bright moon. Would you believe 2 large birds sat on the palm branches just at the edge of the porch?! I couldn't! I was ecstatic! I watched and watched, and then one flew away, and another returned. I peeked out the bathroom window, and, sitting in the palm at the edge of our lot, were two big birds. At the same time, I noticed that, amidst the odd bird calls was the subtle and soothing sound of an owl - a gentle hoo-hoo--hoooo - coming and going. Intrigued, I looked more closely, and realized that I was not seeing my hawks (which, of course, made sense, it being the middle of the night), but a family of owls! 

Wow! I was so excited I woke Chris up. He managed a glance and a mutter, and so I woke Siena up. She and I have shared many happy moments identifying birds, so I knew this late night mum-daughter time would be good. We quietly sat at the windows, watching the birds, for nearly 15 minutes. Then we watched a slightly larger owl sitting on the farther palm, clearly clutching something in its talons, reaching down to rip a bite, and feeding it to another owl next to it. That's nature study for you!

Well, I wish I could have taken photos, but I didn't dare ruin the moment with a flash. I would question my identification but for three things: first, one of the owls sat for quite a long time with the perfect owl profile. Second, this morning Siena and I sat and listened through many different owl calls and were (together, I'm so grateful for the second set of ears) able to identify the hooting as a Great Horned Owl, and the screeching as the call of juvenile owls. And finally, when I discovered these photos of juvenile owls, they matched their body shape and profiles perfectly, even obscured as they were in the dark. 

Sterling is very sad to have missed the night, so I am hoping they will come back sometime. We did see bunnies in the yard this morning, so we've not lost everything (Chris was convinced they like our yard because we have a ridiculously stereo-typically large family of bunnies invade the yard morning and evening). We plan to head into the canyon to look for owl pellets and maybe even find a nest, after I research a bit of where they have said nests. Meanwhile, I just close my eyes, hear their noises and feel an incredible sense of gratitude for the wildlife God has blessed us with in our totally suburban house!