Very odd. No birds.

Finally encountered one of the property's barred owls today. The photos are crappy, but you can probably still tell it is an owl.

It's beautiful!!

I think that if I looked up in a tree and saw something like that first pic with those gleaming red eyes staring down at me, I would be high tailing it back to the house screaming like a little girl.......

At night, parts of the property are right out of a horror movie. My wife likes that, but hates going out there at night and refuses to go alone. I like to imagine I am the scariest monster there. lol

Well, I have to admit that every time I walk out to the garage at night, I am thinking "there are BEARS around here".

Many years ago, not long after Connie and I moved down here, we had been working late with the animals and had finished up, walking back to the house when we heard a very odd sound. Sounded like it was coming from the side of the porch and for all the world sounded like a small plaintive cry "HELP ME". Of course I wanted to know what it was, but as I walked to the porch, the sound continued but moved to the edge of the woods near the side of the house. So I headed there instead. The closer I got to where it seemed to be coming from, the further into the woods it went. Eventually, after walking about 10 ft or so into the woods, I turned to Connie and said "How many horror movies have we watched that started out EXACTLY like this?" So I called off my plans of trying to see what was making that cry.

Never heard it since, and have no idea what it was.

Yeah, that sounds like a monster's version of an anglerfish lure. Ceasing pursuit is like you heard the dude in the theater shouting "DON'T GO IN THERE, GIIIRL!" when the cutie is about to enter a dark room within which the slasher awaits. Kudos.

Sometimes I wish I had this problem, I wake up to a hundred or so hungry little featherdemons, then there's the migratory hookbills like the MRH amazons and red/blue capped conures that love to raid our apple tree. Best part about it? They come late in the fruiting season, they eat fermented apples, we have drunk conures in our backyard