Tuesday, 3-7-06

I couldn’t go to the fly out today but got this report from Jean…

"The little cat-faced owl, the one we’ve been calling "she," was in doorway of hole as usual when I got to the tree at 5:40. Richard had been there for 10 minutes already, and said he had seen her earlier in the afternoon as well. She was fairly deep in the hole, only the head showing, with chin resting on sill, until right at 6:00 one of those street-sweeping machines went by slow, roaring, the vibrations must go right up the trunk and she immediately stood up, one foot draped over the edge. Flyout was about 10 minutes later, very low, and slightly more southerly than usual.

There was a small group of watchers by then  Liz, Martha, Gabriel and one or two others and everyone kept a pretty careful watch on the hole, waiting for owlets to show, but no one saw any movement at all. People began to head for home around 6:30, Liz and I stayed another 10 minutes, then took a little walk around by the horse path to listen for possible fledgers hissing for supper: nope, pretty quiet. General feeling is they’re too young to be out yet….

Oh, by the way  remember that afternoon when the Cooper’s Hawk hit the streetlight, and we thought she might have caught something? Well, somebody does live in that lamp, though don’t know who  saw just a quick sparrow-size movement out of corner of eye."