"And You Can Be On the List!"

I had noticed during my morning walks the largest burrowing owl nesting site on my route, where a family of five had spent much of last year, seemed to be slowly constricting in size. The safe zone, marked off by white plastic pipes, within which humans should not tread appeared smaller, several poles now so close to burrows it seemed the owls would feel crowded. I have no idea if someone (legally or illegally) was moving the posts, or if it was my imagination, but I had not seen any owls there for months now. (One other large site has never had many inhabitants as far as I can tell and a small one in the median of the main street is occupied.)

This morning I almost missed the owl that has taken up residence in the site. I noticed it at the last second, stopped, said "Hello," and moved on whereupon it flew onto one of the plastic pipes and began screeching, at me or not I couldn't tell. It's a deeper sound than the larger hawk makes. But it still translates as "I can kill things!"

I'm just happy to know they're back.