Barred Owls at Sunset – Caterwauling
Shortly after sunset on yet another warm, pleasant day, two Barred Owls called a raucous duet from the woods along a creek. The light of day and the colors of a golden sunset had begun to fade quickly. The owls – somewhere down in the woods, too far away to see – called cook-cook-cook-cook-for-YOUUUU-awwl, YOUU-awwl, and their cook-cook-cook-cook calls overlapped, and rose in intensity and broke into caws and cackles and a wild circus of sounds that lasted for only a minute or two before they abruptly fell quiet. In the hush that followed, crickets chirped, and even a few katydids still sang. An Eastern Towhee called a rich, mellow chur-wheee from the shadows of a darkening hedge.