Nesting Great Horned Owls

For months now we've been hearing and, occasionally, seeing the Great Horned Owls in our new neighborhood east of Paonia. We moved into this small, one-acre farm last September, and month by month we've met the residents, including a fox that hunts rodents in the adjoining field, and a pair of mallards who seem to have set up housekeeping on the pond nearby. We knew that Great Horned Owls nested upstream a mile or so, in years past, and also just up the lane, and it was with interest this winter that we heard their distinct calls (songs, actually, that hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo) and watched them swoop across the yard at dusk in January. Today we went for a stroll midday down the lane and through our friend Perry's yard, heading for the ditch road and the bike trails beyond. Perry, in his eighties, was in his yard, puttering, as he often is, and we stopped to chat. He had some chokecherry wood he'd taken down from a fence line and wondered if we wanted it for our stove. We did. We stood and chatted and I looked around with my binoculars, field glasses Perry calls them, and then suddenly, three o'clock in the afternoon, a Great Horned Owl hoots, and there, thirty feet away, we see the nest, and the owl on it, in a conifer (a scraggly spruce?) in the yard. There is mama owl, and we watch her, but glimpse no babies. Great to have the nest site determined after hearing them all these months! While we stood and talked with Perry, the neighborhood redtail circled, and a kingfisher made a few circuits around the yard. Juncoes are singing and singing, robins are rendezvousing, the redwinged blackbirds are creating a din, and spring is going full bore on Harding Lane. We'll keep you posted. I am dying for a glimpse of those fuzzy little owls. Jane McGarry Paonia