Screech Owl calling

The Screech Owl was calling right by the house early this morning -- the first one I have heard this season (although others have reported seeing and hearing the bird in the area in the past few days). The calls consisted mostly of the downward whinny only occasionally interspersed with the low one-note trill -- the traditional second part of the full call. This may be the same owl I saw the other day but there is no way to know.

Screech Owls formerly nested in the attic of the old Randall House -- a real Charles Addams Victorian fright if ever there was one -- right next to our place. When they finally knocked it down (the bulldozer came and nudged it slightly and it went over in a heap), I went over to see what I could salvage from the rubble and found a dead adult owl! Nevertheless, the owls continued to nest somewhere right around for several years and the fledgling owls used to hang out together and even hunt at dusk right in front of the house while we were barbequing or taking the evening air. In recent years however they do not seem to be nesting in our immediate area but they appear, almost without fail and always calling, in the month of August.

Tom Stock from Manorville came over this morning and joined me in my morning walk around the property. It was a warm, overcast and very humid morning with lots of no-see-ums but, thankfully, few mosquitos. The tide was still going out and the only heron around (aside from a distant Great Egret) was the Green. There were Royal Terns working up and down the main creek and Spotted Sandpipers around the pond edges. The Purple Martins seem to have entirely abandoned the Martin residences at the foot of Bay Avenue but there are still a few active on the marsh and around Aldrich Boat Yard along with some numbers of Barn Swallow. Otherwise a quiet muggy morning.

Eric Salzman