Last Saturday found us chugging up the familiar route to Cieslak Meadow at Silver Falls State Park. It was a definite spring day with soft air, warm sunlight and a forest alive with the sound of birds and buzzing things. We heard the Great Gray muffled hoots as soon as we got out out the car. We had a plan. We headed down Silver Ridge Road to the spot across from where we heard the call last time we were here. Not far from where someone had abandoned an old craft table alongside the road ("Why would someone want to do that," Bobbie asked. "I dunno. I like to think it just maybe fell off the back of the truck," I supposed) the darn bird shut itself up and we stood like a couple of listening ninnies for a long time before we decided to "track" it on the other side of the pond so we hoofed it back to the car and then headed down the barely discernible tire-tracked lane and made the approach from the other side of the pond. Again we heard the call. It fell silent but started up again not much longer so Bobbie took off down slope while I stayed with the dog. It was pleasant sitting in the woods with nothing to do but think and listen. I could sometimes see Bobbie twisting and turning between the trees and she explained later that the owl was projecting its voice first this way and then that way. She was sure it was just trying to throw her off the track. So we definitely heard it but since we didn't sight it, we'll call it an "encounter" with a Great Gray.
Then Sunday we were up close and personal with our sure thing sighting of a Barn Owl at long last. Bobbie had a connection with an Audubon member who knows Farmer Ron way out south of Salem close to the Ankeny Reserve. He lives on a most tidy little 14 acre farm with his wife, horses, goats, pigeons, and garden along with a nesting box full of baby Barneys-four live ones and their gorgeous mother. He lets visitors look at them via a monitor that projects what the web cam stashed in the nest shows. He lets special guests climb up the tall sturdy ladder and peek through the crack in the sliding door of the box. I did and then carefully slid it open to see Mama Owl giving me a dirty mistrustful look before she took off leaving me to admire the babies. They amazed me with their bobbling little heads and little hop hops around the nest. What a privilege it was! And how very different this controlled sighting environment was from the wilds of the day before! Another notch on our owl belts, nonetheless.
