A Screech Owl is calling outside my window...

The evening is calm and quiet and so I can easily hear the haunting call of the Screech Owl just outside my window. I am hypothicizing that he is calling for his mate and marking territory. I am guessing it is the same owl that has been in our yard for years. He used to roost inside a cavity in our old red oak in the backyard and built his nest there with his mate. His little face would appear in the tree cavity, waiting, listening... No, there was no Great Horned Owl nearby to eat him. There were no mice nearby to eat whole. A quick turn of the head, then suddenly he was out, flying silently away into the dusk. A meal was close at hand.

That old red oak tree is gone now. We had tried to save it over the years but decay and age won out and we had to take it down. Upon seeing the black and gooey chunks of the tree after its demise, I was amazed that the tree had lived as long as it did. How could it live with all that rot on the inside? For that matter, how could it stand without being blown over in the wind? All I can surmise is that we were really lucky... the oak sprites were watching over that tree and keeping it from falling over onto my next door neighbor's house.

So the owl has found another home in another tree nearby. I hear him calling, hauntingly, from outside my window.