Freaky Owl…..

Barn Owl, J. Kohut-Bartels, 1999, watercolor

Tonight I heard something really strange.  Close enough to draw my attention.  Downright scary in fact.

I went outside,  remembering I hadn’t closed up the chicken coop (I have 11 girls in there, but only counted 10 tonight) and heard this sound in the back fields of kudzu.  There used to be a stand of 9 acres of forest, but the stupid city of Atlanta sold off this property to a California development company who  came in two years ago and ripped up most of the trees.  We were lucky they left the huge oaks on one side, and some pines and oaks on the other side.  In the middle grew kudzu, the Japanese import that covers everything standing still in the South.

Ok, I admit to being  really scared.  This was an unearthly sound and something I haven’t heard  quite like that before.   I took a flashlight, grabbed a stick and walked towards the hen house.  What I was going to do with the  stick I hadn’t  a clue, but I was prepared.

It was loud.  I wondered  whether it was a dying dog, racoon, something out  there.  I closed the hens in and listened.  Whatever it was it was really close.

(I confess:  I closed myself in with the hens for a few moments, because they were restless, and I thought I was safer with my girls.  Whatever was out there was very near.  And must be Big.)

I finally decided it was an owl, had to be.  What kind of owl I didn’t have a clue, so I came back in, (the bird still hooting) and spent an hour on the internet listening to all the different kinds of owl sounds.  The closest I could come to was a Barred Owl.  But I wouldn’t want to be a hen around one.  I have read owls will raid a chicken coop, then kill all the hens for fun.  They will eat their fill, but they are chicken killers just because roosting hens are sleepy and don’t move much.  They are pretty torpid on the roost.

I can still hear it hooting away, but it won’t  get chicken on the hoof tonight.  This will teach me to close up the hens each night.  A few years ago, neighborhood dogs got under the fence and killed 12 of our 18 hens roosting.  It was a horrible thing to confront at 4am in the rain.  We were burying hens for days as they died.

I have a painting I did back in ’99 of an Owl….one of my favorite paintings.  It was when  I went from oils to watercolor and fell in love with the medium.  I’m pretty sure this painting is of a Barn Owl, not a Barred Owl.

Funny, the city of Atlanta is 3 miles away and one wouldn’t think that owls, hawks and peregrines would be flying around.  But what happens as humans take over fields, land, and develop housing, birds  adapt and find their hunting and nesting territory where they can.  Humans with their trash bring birds looking for rats and other small animals and birds of prey help with that issue.

If I can I’m going to post the audio file I found that sounded pretty much  what I was hearing outside tonight.  It was the sound of a Barred Owl, not a Great Horned Owl.

In any case, it’s a good introduction to Fall, and possibilities  of this season.  A full moon tonight, and great expectations of further mysteries.

http://owling.com/Barred.htm#gallery

Lady Nyo

Tags: and other birds of prey, Atlanta, Barn Owl, Barred Owl, Great Horned Owl, Owls, predators, scary things that scream in the night, urban chicken farming, urban ecology