>From John Tebbutt
Frederick, MD
tebbutt at rhino.ncsl.nist.com

I thought I would share this moment of bliss and astonishment with all
of you. It is a short tale of my first real owling outing (I say "outing"
- I was actually on my deck at home!).

On Friday night around sunset I had the most thrilling experience! I
made a tape of some E. SCREECH OWL and some BARRED OWL calls, and
decided to see if we had any of either species on our property. SCREECH
OWL, nada, but the BARRED OWLS! I played the sound bite once (I think
it's about 20 seconds long) at the back of the house, on the deck, and
I thought I heard a distant "whoop, whoop". Played it again, and an
owl came swooping in to the right and landed in a tree. One more time,
and another one came in to the left, and than they started calling, and
my goodness! Talk about crazy as a hoot owl! It was magnificent! They
sounded just like the tape, but went on for much longer. The only time
they quietened down was if we moved (Julie was there, too). Well, after
a while, it seemed as if they had left or shut up, so I decided to go
inside, where I couldn't decide if I was hearing things or if the owls
were still calling outside, so I cracked open a window, and sure enough
they were - this was about an hour after they originally appeared, I
think. I decided to go out again, with a flashlight, to see if I could
get a look at one of them, but the flashlight seemed to shut them up
pretty quickly. What a spectacular experience! They were really loud,
too - booming through the woods! I thought this would pay back all
those folks in the neighborhood with barking dogs... Seemed like they
came from over to the left, about 11 o'clock as you look out from the
deck.

I have to say, though, that those 3 little sound bites seem to have
caused a lot of distress. I won't be doing that again in the near
future - not around the house, anyway. It was good to discover that the
owl I'd seen in the yard a couple of weeks before wasn't a fluke or a
passerby. Seems like a pair of owls have us firmly in their territory! :-)

Cheers, JT