That’s right, I give a HOOT! Every summer, we’ve had a Screech Owl calling it’s soulful song, so last year we hung a owl house about 15 feet off the ground in a pine at the edge of the woods.

One of my favorite things to do is to try to mimic the birds and I’m pretty good at some of them! Even to my own amazement 3 times now I’ve heard the screech owl in the woods and returned it’s call until it’s flown into the nearest tree to where I am. It’s always thrilling and usually a little scary too as they are silent flyers  so you don’t know they are there  since it’s night time until they do their call again.

Here’s a picture I took of one that I called in. It’s lit by a spotlight so I could get the picture.
To learn more about the Screech Owl or to hear it’s song you can go to one of my favorite sites for identifying creatures www.enature.com

A couple of weeks ago I had noticed a strange looking bird flying out of the pines early in the morning while taking the dogs out. It was still dark enough so I basically just saw it’s outline, which looked like a fairly large bird. What made it stand out was it’s flight pattern or how it flapped it’s wings.  Silently, and flap, flap, flap, glide. Now, for the first time ever after living here for 8 years, the past two weeks we have heard an owl that hoots! It hasn’t let us spot it yet as it’s silently flying from tree to tree around the yard every time we think we’re getting close. I haven’t mastered the owls hoot and I’m not sure I ever will be able to since the real hoot is kind of low pitched and really is a solid sound where my version is higher pitched and definitely more windy sounding.
Much to our delight, last night there were two of them calling back and forth, one a little higher pitched than the other. It’s been hard to tell if they have checked out the owl house, but we have our fingers crossed that we will have some owlets!
I’ll keep you posted!! :-)

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