Birding from my bed

I've been working on a post from my birding experience from this past Labor Day weekend, but I did some unexpected birding last night, that was quite interesting, so I'm going to skip ahead for the moment...


Last night at 3:00 am the cat half woke me up when she jumped on the bed. Then I heard this hoo-hoo..
I sat up and grabbed Brian's shoulder "Did you hear that?? Listen! Shh! ..................................... ........................................ I swear I heard an owl! ......................... ..................................... ............. It was a great horned! ........................... ...................................... ................... Maybe I just dreame-" hoo-hoohoo hooo-hooo "Did you hear it?! It IS a great horned owl! Right outside!"

The next words out of his mouth were why I love him so much.. "Do you want to go look for it?"

YES!

So we jumped out of bed, grabbed a flashlight, my phone (it has owl calls on it!), and shoes and ran outside to where the owl was hooting. It was just across the street in a small patch of trees on my neighbor's property. We just stood there in awe as we listened to it sing.

Then we tried to find it, shining the flashlight about where it was, and calling him with my ibird app. We must have startled it, because then I heard him across the next street up on the hill. I knew it wouldn't stick around long anyway, because there are just a few sparse trees around the neighborhood, nothing the size of habitat it needed to survive, so we followed him. We got right up to the patch of trees he was in again, and listened. Then we tried the flashlight again and this time he didn't fly off, but continued hooting. We couldn't find it though. So we circled up around to the other side of the tree patch and as soon as we got within 15 feet of him, he flew off across the road again and farther away, hooted once, and then took off out of hearing range. We never saw him once.

Oh well, I was just happy to have heard an owl, and a great horned owl was a real treat in my town. We went back to the house talking excitedly as we walked "He was RIGHT THERE!" "I can't believe it!" "That's the first time I've heard a great horned owl!" "Too bad we couldn't see him"

We went to bed, but I was too excited to fall back to sleep too quickly and kept an ear open in case he came back. But he didn't.

As I finally started drifting off to sleep I hear this bark-y screech a few times. I turned to Brian "Are you still awake? Do you hear that?" "Yeah, what is it?" "I think it's a screech owl! Or I guess it could be a raccoon or something." then I hear it's distinctive thrill call. "It's definitely a screech owl!!"
This owl was right about the same patch of trees the great horned was in when we heard him the first time. I was surprised, especially since great horneds sometimes will prey on screechys.
We didn't get out of bed, for this one only called a few times then we didn't hear him again. Plus we both had work in the morning.

I wasn't expecting on doing any birding that night, and it's still a bit early for owls to be calling. I can't wait to go looking for them during the day while they're breeding!!


As a quick note, this morning when I dropped Brian off at work, a red tailed hawk called his signature call and flew about 20 feet above us. How cool!!

Below are pictures (not my own) of a great horned owl and a screech owl

Great Horned Owl image from

http://thebatavian.com/jimnigro

Eastern Screech Owl image from Wikipedia