Listening in the Dark

I wrote last month about the barred owls in the neighborhood, about how I've learned that if, when I hear one, I look toward the sound and am patient I often can see the owl, if not in the tree then in flight.  I have heard owls in the trees behind the houses on my side of the street, in the trees behind the houses on the other side of the street, in the trees behind the houses across Cumberland, and in the trees along North Morningside.  I don't hear them all that often, though, and it always feels special when I do hear them.

Friday morning, early, I heard an owl in the trees in the ravine that runs behind our house.  The sound was coming from the trees behind Kathy and Steve's house, or maybe a little farther away, behind one of the houses between Kathy and Steve's house and Lynsley's.  I listened, and then I saw it take flight in the early morning darkness, over Kathy and Steve's house.

Later that day I heard from Lynsley that she had found a dead owl in her yard last week.  She thought it might have been a hawk that killed it; I've read since that the barred owl's most serious predator is the great horned owl, but lots of owls get hit by cars, too.  So I don't know what happened to this one.  But it was dead, and owls mate for life -- so somewhere nearby, there is an owl that has been left alone.

Last night I was getting ready to go to bed when I heard the owl again.  It was around the same place I'd heard it Friday morning, but it just calling, over and over again -- hoo-hoo-hoohooo, hoo-hoo-hoohooo.  I listened for a while; it went on for a long time.  It didn't move as far as I could tell.  Then I went back inside.

This morning early I heard it again, in the same place.  I heard it call several times, and then it flew, this time in the other direction, across our yard, and toward Cumberland.

I've never heard owls so close so frequently, as I have these last few days. It makes me wonder if it's calling for its missing partner.  Maybe that's too anthropomorphic.

Maybe it's not.