Well, I posted on Monday asking how everyone felt about pictures here on the blog–do you mind my sometimes blurry, sometimes grainy, sometimes shady pictures? Or would you prefer for me to find only good photography to share (which would probably not be my own!!). All the comments and emails I got were “yes, we like your pictures!” so here’s some more! {smile}

I mentioned on Monday that we’ve got an owl in the neighborhood that seems to have made himself quite comfortable and is settling in. Well, he’s taken it a step farther this week and is now roosting in the tree right in our driveway in the evening, and screeching. I’ve searched All About Birds high and low for a recording of the sound we’ve been hearing from this owl. (That’s our go-to source for bird calls!) When I say “screeching” I’m not kidding. If you go here, and scroll down to “adult song, juvenile call” and play that sound for a minute, at first you don’t hear anything but very soft hooting, then there’s this bone-chilling shriek…yep, that’s what we’re listening to in our driveway, or the back field every. night. right now.

I studied those sounds for a while and I’m 99% sure it’s a juvile call.  The female “squawk” is just a little too high-pitched at the end of the call. That juvenile scream fits exactly.

We think he’s maybe stalking our free-range chickens. They’re pretty canny about roosting before dark, so he hasn’t caught anyone yet. But he’s not very shy and it’s making me a little nervous. I mean, even when I went out in the driveway to take pictures of him, he just turned, look at me, and then turned back to staring at the field as if I wasn’t even there. Thankfully Pixie is in a pretty secure pen in the backyard and sleeps in a small dog crate so she’s safe. I would miss any chicken, but I would be really upset if we lost her now. I’m telling ya, don’t name the farm animals. It’s all downhill from there! {smile}

In the meantime, we’re trying to round the chickens up again. {sigh} It’s really important to us that they can free-range and be outside…and dust bath in my flower beds and hunt grasshoppers and eat our tomatoes and knock over things in the feed shed and lay eggs in the garage…but sometimes they take it to extremes–like trying to nest on the front porch. It makes a mess. So we have to round them all up again and coop them up for a while to get them back in the habit of coming “home” on a regular basis. Especially when we’ve got a new predator in town!

And Mr. Fix-It is not happy that someone has decided to start leaving eggs on his tool box. (Seriously, she jumps up 4 feet onto the top of his 3-stack tool box and leaves a nice, warm, fresh egg for him every morning. Right next to the wire cutters.) So Speedracer and I have been putting up some chicken wire and coaxing everyone back to the chicken house. Hopefully they’ll get back in a routine before bad weather shows up, or that owl gets someone.

What’s new around your homeplace these days?

By the way, if you’re interested, there’s a bunch of fun owl information in this post from last year…I think that owl might have been this owls momma or daddy. I don’t know how to tell male from female yet.

And here’s a few great bird study resources you might like…

• Free printable bird journal and coloring pages
• Poster of nesting types (jpeg image)
• Bird anatomy illustration (and Getting Started Birding)
• Free printable birding journal
• A Manual of Bird Study (free ebook)
• Bird Nature Study printables

Or you can find these and more nature study resources on my Nature Study Pinterest board!

Follow Jamie Oliver {Walking In High Cotton}’s board Nature Study & Natural Sciences on Pinterest.