Hello, I am a lurker who enjoys reading the posts very much, but wanted to share today an encounter my daughter and I had walking at dusk last evening in our neighborhood, Hobby Hill Farms. We were walking past a wooded area and heard a low cooing noise, "hoooo," looked up in time to see a crow fly off, then we saw the owl. He was only about six feet away, not very high up, looking straight at us. We stared at each other a few seconds then he flew off a bit farther away but still in plain sight. He made his hooting call to us, dipping his head and hunching his shoulders, and we waited a bit and called back to him in imitation. We went back and forth like this for several minutes. He had this really cute way of puffing up and dipping his head and swaying just before calling to us. We were quite charmed!! On the same walk we heard a kingfisher, saw a great blue heron, swifts over the lake, cardinals, bluebirds, and met a gregarious rufus towhee who let us come quite close as he scratched in mulch and paused occasionally to sing. Lynda PerryYou are subscribed to VA-Richmond-General. To unsubscribe, send email to va-richmond-general-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. To adjust other settings (vacation, digest, etc.) please visit, //www.freelists.org/list/va-richmond-general.