Tonight (Friday) around 8:30 we were sitting in my living room and
complaining about how irritating a mockingbird and some other assorted
birds were being, doing *their* complaining and complaining right
outside the open window so that we could hardly hear each other talk. 
Somehow, it didn't occur to any of us to ask "why" they were so
insistent.  My friend Peter stepped outside the door to scare them off
and then hissed through the window; "grab the binoculars, there's an owl
out here!"  Sure enough, in a large oak just off my driveway, maybe 10
or 15 feet up, a seemingly enormous (I've never seen one quite so close
before -- they are BIG) Barred Owl was perched against the trunk,
starring out with those baleful black eyes and trying desperately to
ignore the small birds harrassing him.  Within a minute, he took off
over the house to the backyard.  We went through the house and tried to
find him again in the backyard, but couldn't make him out through the
thick leaves until he took flight a second time, heading over to Maydale
Nature Center.  

Only two days ago, in mid-afternoon I was tormented by another loud bird
-- this one a Mockingbird that had taught itself to sing the "tune" of
someone's car alarm -- the one that goes "rrrrrrrrr" on two notes, then
pauses for just long enough that you think "phew, glad that's over
with!" and then starts up again.  Over and over and over.  He "sung"
that alarm for a half-hour straight.  :rolls eyes:

Laura Appelbaum,
Cloverly, MD