Posts Tagged ‘owl hooting’
Transcendent Ambience
With our weather taking a mild turn, I took the blankets off three of the horses yesterday, leaving Mia covered because she doesn’t grow as thick a winter coat as the others. Blanketing horses is interesting in that it seems like they’d just as soon not have them on, but they appreciate the added protection against the elements when the weather gets crazy.
As such, they will cooperate by standing still while we put them on. It is a treat to be able to reward them by taking the blankets off again as soon as the conditions allow. Happily, Mia doesn’t fuss over keeping hers on.
She finished her feed and came down to where I was tying a freshly-filled hay net on a fence post. I did my best to read her intentions in case she preferred to get rid of the blanket, but she gave me no indication that was the case. She seemed more interested in gobbling bites of hay.
With the warm temperature, I was working without a hat and wearing uninsulated gloves. After finishing all the chores and collecting empty feed buckets, I paused to lean on the gate and enjoy the moment. It was a wonderfully quiet night. As darkness approached, Mia was wandering from one placemat after another to scrounge any remaining spilled feed pellets. The other three horses were each at a different hay net, munching away.
In the distance, across the road in a grove of pine trees, an owl started hooting, adding to the transcendent ambience.
It was the kind of solitary experience that wouldn’t have been as special if someone else were there, but as I was enjoying it, I found myself wishing everyone could have the same opportunity.
I don’t know how I ever got so lucky to live in this remarkable place and have a relationship with these precious horses.
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Unplanned Shots
It was just a normal walk with the dog that ended in a play session in the front yard. Cyndie directed my attention to a leaf standing up on its stem in the snow. The spectacle seemed photo-worthy to me, so while she was tugging and throwing Asher’s favorite outdoor toy, I crouched low to capture the interesting phenomenon.
Not convinced that this was the optimal angle, I repositioned myself to try again. As I did, Asher took interest in my movement. In my haste to get off another shot before he arrived to obliterate the scene, I heard my phone camera clicking off a burst of photos.
As quickly as I could, I leveled the phone for one last try before Asher arrived.
I like how it turned out.
He didn’t entirely flatten the leaf; its stem remained frozen to the ground, but he disturbed the surrounding snow enough to make the scene a much less interesting mess.
To complement the fun photo shots of our natural environment, we’ve also been listening to a lot of catfight sounds the raccoons have been making for whatever reason raccoon conflicts might be occurring. (See: sounds raccoons make during mating season.) While walking through the woods this morning with Asher, I heard a wonderful owl hoot. When we caught up with Cyndie in the barn, I told her about having heard an owl.
She said she heard it, too. She then told me she’d recently read up on the sounds the raccoons have been making, and it said that sometimes a raccoon can sound like an owl screech when mating. That would have spoiled it for me, except we both agreed the sound we heard was not a screech at all. It was definitely a perfect, pleasant hoot, and we’re going to go with it having been an owl.
Our natural world at its finest.
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Relative Something 