It seems the owl I saw about a month ago while staining the porch stairs has decided to make our woods its home. We haven’t actually seen the owl prey on anything yet, but the same birds that whine when a fox is nearby let us know that the owl is around.
The owl moves through the under story so quietly and gracefully that if it weren’t for the whiny birds, we’d probably never know the owl was there. The whiny birds whine and the owl just sits on a tree branch until it feels like moving. I find it interesting that the owl typically picks the branches of the smaller trees in our woods. Even though it is the under story, some of our larger trees have lower branches but the owl doesn’t seem to care for those.
Having the owl around makes me think of a short story I read many years ago about a cat-eating owl. The owl perched on a window sill and plucked out kittens from inside a house. I have no memory of what else this story was about or who wrote it. I suspect it was from the now defunct Story magazine.