Tweets -

Let me do a bit of crowing first - my son's Cross Country running team
qualified for the Junior Olympics National Meet in Albuquerque in December,
so we'll be heading down there in a couple of weeks for him to run.

Today, at practice at Wilburton Park in Bellevue (next to the old Wilburton
School, and just east of the Bellevue Botanical Gardens), I was running with
the team. I was only fast enough to keep up with Marshall, who is 8 - we
were the last runners on the loop in the last light of twilight around 4:45.
We were a bit northeast of the baseball fields.

I was just ahead of Marshall when I noted two large birds flying low through
the trees about 10 feet to my left. I realized almost immediately that they
were Barred Owls.

I stopped and pointed them out to Marshall - the owls kindly perched in a
tree 20 feet off the trail, one about 10 feet up, the other about 15 feet
up. They began calling.

We didn't stop for long (since we were supposed to be running continuously
for 25 minutes). Marshall told me that he was going to tell his dad about
the owls because they were so cool. I asked him if he'd ever seen wild owls
before. "Yes," he replied. Then after a pause he added, "On TV." I
resisted the impulse to tell him that TV wasn't life...

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
== hummer at isomedia.com