Taking the garbage to the curb tonight, my eye caught winged movement to my right. I looked up to see a bird alighting on one my neighbor’s gables. This wasn’t a bird the size of a robin or some similar worm feeder. This was definitely a bird of prey, and what birds of prey hunt at night, dear children?
A few minutes later, I followed the lads out in to the backyard, them to do their business before we retired for the evening, me to see if I could spot the owl with my flashlight without said light finding its way into neighboring windows. Both of the dogs reacted as the owl flew overhead, and it landed on the very top of the house behind ours, the silhouette unmistakable against the nightly sky of a nearly full moon.
After a few seconds the lads lost interest, but I remained still, except to point my torch at the bird and hit the light. He was facing away from us, but did swivel that head around for a quick peek, the light reflecting orange in his eyes. I killed the light and continued to watch, and about thirty seconds later, off he flew toward another house. And despite the usage of the commonly associated owl call in this post’s title, not a peep out of the bird the entire time I was able to observe him.
I really wish I had some NVGs or a night-vision adapter for my camera, or something. There’s an owl stalking within our neighborhood, and that’s really cool.