Wild Life

After seeing a raccoon, baby partridge, a bear -- and then something knocked the vireo nest down (did the babes fly?), a wood thrush and a hermit thrush had a conversation and then...

The drive back from the hike showed us the rain was coming back soon. At home, we retreated to the porch to sit, sip, take in the night. Suddenly:

Our first thought: The fledgling which we had seen, under the watchful eyes of its barred owl parents, tumble out of a crook in a broken tree, its first flight not much of a success.

But, later, we had spied it up here:

But the sound came again. A fox. For sure. We waited. Finally, the fox drifted away.

We ventured into the woods where we’d seen the young owl. No sign of it. No sign of a tussle, no stray feathers. Adult gone, too. The day’s lesson done.

Walking back to the house, this is what we heard: