FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] Feeder Watch

[James Brooks <comeback@xxxxxxxx>]

The snow has stopped falling and at 20:35 the male Great Horned Owl up 
behind my house is hooting, not to be outdone by the Nashville owls.
I went out on the porch to listen. His hoots are broken, sounding like 
they are coming over a cell phone that is breaking up. I do not hear a 
female answering. We are pretty much bachelors here in Malone Hollow.
The snow has changed everything, brightening it up like a full moon, 
sticking to all the branches so whiteness is reaching into the dark. I 
should be able to see the owl, but I cannot. His hoots come from the 
direction of the giant Northern Red Oak up behind the house, the largest 
tress on my five acres, maybe a hundred feet high, or so it appears from 
here. There is something heroic about a tree, standing there rooted, 
taking whatever comes its way, but always striving and reaching ever 
higher, the blackness of its limbs and branches now etched in white.
It's all reflected lights, but as I don't have yard lights, and 
threatened to sue my neighbor if he didn't remove one by my property 
line (he did) I don't know where the light is coming from that alllows 
this new snow to so brighten my small world. It is as though it glows 
from within.
It was worth coming out to take this in, but I'm in shirt sleeves and 
shivering now. Time to take some of that good red oak from someone 
else's tree and put another log on the fire. Oak to smoke. I wonder if 
my living tree smells it and is reaching upward to get away from me. It 
is the yin and the yan, being both a lover and a consumer of nature. 
There is harmony in contradiction.
James Brooks
Jonesborough, TN

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