Parliament of Owls, Adjourned

We started hearing the owls about five or six years ago. I’m not talking about a single owl, hooting in the distance, briefly. We had always heard those.

There was an owl hooting near the kitchen window. Another on the other side of the house, beyond our bedroom window. An owl behind the house. We would hear at least one of them hoot at least once a week.

We heard them in all seasons: winter, as expected. Barred owls stake their territories and mate during what in the rest of the world is early spring, but what is still winter on this hill. But we also heard them as the trees leafed out in spring, in the heat of the summer, as the leaves changed in the fall, and in the dreary “stick season” between leaves and snow.

We would hear a single owl hooting. Or they would call to each other from each side of the house. Or we would hear the one near the bedroom calling to an owl farther off – on the other side of the road.

They were barred owls. Once I heard a hooting that I thought could be a great horned owl, but just that once. The rest were barred owls giving their, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all,” call in all its variations.

One night this summer it sounded like all the local owls had gotten together – for a party or a fight, I’ll never know. There was hooting, howling and screeching. They sounded as much like monkeys as they did like owls.

After we had had owls as our nightly companions for a few years, my husband noticed that the red squirrel that nested in our yard had gone. No other red squirrel had taken over her territory.

Had the squirrels become a snack for the owls? It seemed possible. We could only hope that the owls had reduced our abundant mouse population as well.

Then the blue jays returned. I have not heard so much as a single hoot since. Blue jays will mob owls and hawks, surrounding them, calling at them, and chasing them away.

Have the blue jays run the owls off?

Also, along with the blue jays, we now seem to have a red squirrel again as well. Could it have happened so quickly? The jays pestering the owls into leaving, and a red squirrel retaking the old territory now that it is safe from owls?