Hooo's There?

The crows in the woods woke me up at 2 am a couple nights ago. The next morning I remembered the ruckus as if it were a dream, but knowing it was real I searched the internet for reasons that might rouse an enormous murder of crows in the middle of the night. Most suggested the presence of a predator as the most likely scenario, but I couldn't picture it.

Later, I heard a piece on the radio about young birdwatchers and a guide showing some middle school kids around the woods. They were searching for owls. "Just look for a football shape in the trees," he advised, "something that looks a little different." Of course, by the end of the story, the group had spotted a barred owl.

That afternoon, while walking Lucy, I noticed how the sunlight silhouetted the trees so starkly against the blue winter sky. It was beautiful, and I remembered the radio piece from that morning. I had never seen an owl in the wild before, and I wondered if it was because I had never looked. Hundreds of trees were visible from where I stood, and I scanned their boughs eagerly. A football shape presented itself immediately on a branch not far away. Could it really be that easy? I thought, but squinting for closer inspection, I saw it was really just a fat squirrel.

The rest of the walk had the quality of beachcombing but with my neck craned up instead of down. There seemed to be just as many branches as bits of shell on a beach, and who knew what treasure was waiting to be spotted? 

I didn't see an owl, but when I got home, I did a little research and found that one telltale sign may be white spatters on the trunk below where the owl roosts. I grabbed my binoculars and stepped out on the deck to scan the trees in the woods. Wondering if it might have been an owl that disturbed the crows the night before, I hoped my chances were good. Across the parking lot, I spotted splashes of white about two-thirds of the way up a pine tree, but the foliage was too dense for me to get a good look, and my compact binoculars were frustratingly shaky.

The most sensible solution seemed to be to order a better pair of binoculars, which I did, along with a rig to help take photos with my phone. Those were delivered yesterday, and although the view through the binoculars is breathtakingly clear, I can't get them to work with my phone. And I still haven't seen an owl.

But I might! Because? Now I'm looking.