What Else was Up There

On the hike over the weekend I stopped on hearing an oriole and looked up and sure enough there was that orange and black bird darting about. But what was also up in that hemlock still as the bole of the tree but looking with eyes that were as large as tea cups and more like frisbees once I had the binoculars trained on him: a great horned owl. It was hard to tell whether he was looking at me as i...f just as a matter of curiosity, or as something that might be as much of a delicacy as a rabbit. After about sixty seconds he flew off and his body made me realize I was watching the airbus of the bird kingdom fly off. Wow. And the muffled whoo-ah, whoo-ah, the sound of a mighty bellows. Now that is a miracle of wings and a miracle of bird.