Great Horned Owl

Spring has come very early for most of the United States this year, so Mrs Walles and I have turned the heating off.  This is one of my favourite times of the year because we can open the doors and windows and let the fresh air in, instead of staying cocooned inside with either the air conditioning or the heat running (essential though they may be for comfort in summer and winter).

Last week was particularly warm with summery temperatures that lasted through the night and so we had our door open late in the evening, and one night during a break in the noise from the television we noticed an unusual sound coming from outside. Mrs Walles, who is of course more familiar with such things, soon identified it as an owl.

Now I am aware that New Zealand is not without owls, like the morepork or the world-conquering barn owl (which is also found here in Pennsylvania).  But they have nothing on what we were listening to (you can hear a recording I made here), as I discovered when I flicked through my field guide.

This was the call of the Great Horned Owl, a nocturnal bird of prey that grows half a metre high.  It eats cats - not exclusively, of course, but it gives you an idea of what we're dealing with.  It's not the kind of thing you'd want to run into on a dark night (which is of course exactly when you would run into it) and it knows it, too, judging by the expression of disdain it wears in all the photos I've seen.

This hooting normally ends by Christmas so we were quite fortunate to hear the call, or rather calls because what we heard was a duet.  One owl was not far from our house and another was responding from some distance away, and the call is used to establish territory...perhaps our two late callers had been encroaching on each other's turf and were trying to sort things out.  We were doubly lucky to hear it, really, since normally the double-glazed doors and windows would all be shut and we'd be oblivious.  I realise now that they probably hoot all through the night in November and I've just never heard it because the double glazing muffles most sound and the constant buzz of heating systems drowns out the rest.

Anyway, I'm very glad to have heard an owl at last.  Don't expect me to go out trying to get any pictures myself, though.  I'd worry that a particularly ambitious one would swoop in for the kill, and I'd return either missing a scalp or with a surplus owl attached to my head.  No, owl hunting is for the birds, if you ask me.

A post post

Last time I was complaining that sometimes the post office is closed unexpectedly because of some federal holiday or other that Mrs Walles and I do not mark (not that we wouldn't be keen to mark said holidays, of course, its just that not everyone gets them off).

Now I'm going to balance things out by extolling the virtues of something that all Americans take for granted, but that to me is like magic.  In America if you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, the mail man will take it away for you, with no fuss.  You can have all your gilt bathrooms and antique ivory back scratchers: as far as I'm concerned this is the epitome of luxury.


I was vaguely aware of this before I came here.  Movies had taught me that in the US mailboxes had a little red flag on the side that had something to do with sending mail.  As a child I was deprived in the mailbox department because we had a post office box instead.  But things have changed.  Now I have one of those fancy American mail boxes (approved by the Postmaster General himself, no less!) complete with the little red flag.  Mrs Walles and I spruced ours up last year with a fresh coat of paint.  I was going to put up a photo but when I found this almost identical one on Wikipedia I decided I could save myself the trouble.

Ironically the red flag isn't necessary.  You just put the mail you want to send inside in the morning and later that day you find it gone, typically replaced with screeds of glossy catalogues and fliers and the occasional bill.  Every time I do it I'm tempted to put the little flag up, just to get into the spirit of the thing, but then I think twice and realise that the flag would be a signal not just to the mail man but also to any nefarious characters who wonder if any of our correspondence is worth pilfering.

At least it's still there, though, the cherry little flag, just like in the movies.  Even if its duties are only ceremonial, it is nice reminder of where I am (well, that and the enormous flag the neighbours have over their door).  And flag or no flag I can still send mail without setting foot off the property.  Can you?