Thumps in the Night

Late last night, there was a thump from the direction of the dining room. In our ninety-five-year-old farmhouse full of children, I'm pretty good at identifying what I just heard was a kid, or  the cat, or the furnace or hot water heater or fridge compressor. Whatever the thump was, it was hitting the window from outside.

Outside. Not a guy with a hook. Not something I needed to deal with.

Every few minutes for the next hour, that thump repeated itself. I told myself it was a branch, even though I know darn well that there's no branch outside that window.  Picture us sitting there with the television muted, watching the dark window for the next sound.  Hubby finally saw something hit the window from outside (I was right!) and looked out the back door with his flashlight,

The  first time I went for the camera, a passing car spooked him before I got the SD card back in.  Three or four times, our little visitor took off and returned.  Teenage Daughter and I tried different cameras and lenses and settings. She's taken night pictures with her camera. I've been too busy learning how to take pictures of quilts to have researched how to take a picture of an owl by flashlight.

Then we broke out the bird books. Our little visitor was a Northern Saw-Whet Owl.  We've rarely seen owls in the wild before, and never in our own back yard.