Although we had never been privileged to experience the sight of the two adult great barred owls closely monitoring the experimental nest-leaving of their fledgling, we knew two ravine acquaintances who had, and they had regaled us with their appreciative sightings of the events. We did have the good fortune of seeing one of the adults and the more fully-grown juvenile being accosted by outraged robins - of all birds - on one occasion.

The two owls, as seems their custom, simply were unperturbed at all the racket caused by the outraged and hysterical pair of robins. It was long past nesting time so we hardly knew what caused the outrage; simply territorial, one might assume. But the ravine was as much the territory of the owls and the hawks who came around continually and nested there, as it was robins and crows, the two species we'd thus far seen reacting so territorially to the presence of (hungry, omnivorous) owls.

We hear the presence of the owls far more frequently than those rarer occasions when we actually see them, ensconced on branches, and invariably there are hysterical crows (once the hawks) circling furiously and vociferously around them. Yesterday we heard the unmistakable long, drawn-out hooting of an owl, repeating and repeating itself. We were convinced, by the quality of the last note of the call that it was a human trying out their owl-hooting skill, to attract a response.

We did, soon after, hear a response, a single caw. And we laughed, assuming that the person had attracted the attention of a crow, not an owl. Soon afterward, as we continued our trail hike, and approaching the conclusion of our hour-and-a-half round trip, there was a growing racket of an assemblage of furious crows nearby, circling above and within the canopy, and we realized, belatedly, that it had been no human we'd heard, but an owl.