Daniel,  my young friend, was anxious to see the barn owl that I had seen the evening before. So, we hauled our binoculars and my spotting scope out behind my barn and focused on a hole in the shaggy dead fronds hanging from my tall palm tree. “There’s one”, he indicated in an excited whispered shout. But, by the time I got my scope aimed precisely on the hole, the bird had flown into the evening sky. I saw its silhouette glide behind the palm and across the fading sunset.

Days, no weeks before, we had been hearing in the back quarter acre loud croakings and and hissings as evenings came on. What nocturnal animal produced such sounds? Bats? No, it didn’t sound like bats. Too loud; too bird-like. It must be birds, but what species? Undoubtedly owls. All the diurnal species had already retreated into silence. So, we searched my Sibley Field Guide. The only owl whose call, according to the printed description, seemed to come near what we heard was the western screech owl.

Then, one evening, when the calls were loud and inviting, my wife, Daniel and I went out into the back yard to watch and listen. We stayed until the mosquitoes drove us back indoors. Nothing showed up.

The next evening Daniel and I had better luck. The dark shapes of fairly large birds were circling our yard and producing the calls we had heard. Undoubtedly owls, but it was too dark to make an ID. As we listened (it was too dark to see much), one circled wide and then approached us from the northeast, croaking loudly to reveal its circular flight pattern. Then as it passed just above our heads, it let out a spine-chilling chrrrrrrr that made us jump nearly out of our binocular straps. Then it cackled as if it was laughing at us.

Two days ago, Bill, my birding mentor came for a visit. We went out to see what we could discover about the owls. Taking one look at my tall palm tree, he said that barn owls like to make their nests deep in the untrimmed dead fronds of palms such as mine. I scanned up and down the hairy palm with my binoculars for suspicious holes. As soon as I stopped at a prominent one far up on the tree, I saw the whitish heart-shaped face of a barn owl peering out at me. Bill saw it too, but Daniel was a bit too slow. He saw only the shadowy silhouette flapping off from the nest that was obviously in that hole. We waited, watched and listened for a good fifteen minutes before Bill announced that he had to take off. No sounds from the owl.

Last night with Daniel, the barn owl that we saw escaping the nesting hole, like the apparition from the previous night, made no sounds, not with its wings, not with its voice. So, could this be the bird that made the raucous sounds we had been hearing? It circled around and passed silently right over our heads, not 10 feet above. It landed in trees 200 yards from my house.

Then a second barn owl exited the hole, circled around the palm toward the west and headed due north over the trees where the first owl perched. Then it circled back around like an aircraft in a landing pattern, and came in on final approach directly towards us like we were beacons at the near end of an 18/36 runway. It descended as the first one did to within 10 feet of our heads. Then it did a strange and wonderful thing. It stopped immediately above our heads, beating its wings like a hovering kestrel, and bent its face down to peer at us as if to assess us as prey. (Now, I know what a mouse must feel like.) I guess we seemed a bit too large, because it rose again like a touch and go and flew to join the first in the distant trees.

Daniel and I stood there in the thickening dusk in awe, barely aware of the mosquito bites on our bare skin. As we packed up our gear and started around the corner of the barn toward the house, a barn owl flew from the trees and began cackling uproariously as if laughing at its own joke. Then, a second, a third and a fourth owl ascended and joined the raucous laughter. They were producing the very calls we had been hearing and whose sources we had been feverishly trying to identify.

There is no doubt in my mind that these mischievous barn owls, probably juveniles, were enjoying immensely the retelling of a practical joke pulled on a couple of strange-looking suckers near that red barn over there. I couldn’t help but laugh with them. ~ by Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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