Saw-whet Owl

November 3.

Someone asks if I want to go see an owl, I ask if it's a Snowy owl.  No.  We go down the stairs and eventually find a small crowd looking in a tree.  Crows cawing in displeasure, wrens, chickadees, and juncos, fluttering from branch to branch.  A very small owl sits on a low branch, with its eyes shut, occasionally opening its beak, though there is too much racket to hear if any sound emerges.  "A Northern Saw-whet owl," someone says, Aegolius acadicus.  

We watch it for a while then walk back up to the office.  I'm at lunch, locate a camera (wasn't sure I had one at the office when I walked down the first time) and head back down.  In the few minutes I was gone, everyone else also left.  The crows find their moment.  As I near the tree, I witness the owl get mobbed, and something drops down to the ground, all the crows fly west.  I look for the owl, when suddenly it shoots past me, heading east, low, through the path the stairwell makes in between the trees, and into another grove of trees.  I walk over there, but don't find it.

Since it's not currently raining, and I'm already out, I walk over to the Fill.  Quiet again.  No mammals.  A lone Western grebe, some American coots in the distance.  When I get to the bridge, a Belted kingfisher shoots over my head, down the canal, dives at an unidentified duck (I haven't figured out what it was, though I looked at it), and disappears with a squawk.

I turn and head back. Fifteen minutes early, but I beat the rain.