Well, I can't reconstruct the circumstances (I can try to guess), but 
after calling for about 20 minutes, the Cooper's had changed 
positions. In its place was a very still, very puffed-up eastern 
screech-owl, right out in the open. It sat there for 15 minutes, the 
Cooper's perched, very still and no longer calling, not six feet 
away. Eventually, after I'd gotten them on video and in the scope for 
several neighbors, the hawk took off. Within two minutes the owl 
assumed a more normal, upright posture (thus losing at least 1/3 of 
its size). About a minute after that, it flapped down to my back 
neighbor's row of arborvitae and vanished, followed seconds later by 
an agitated cardinal pair.

It's the first screech owl I've detected in our neighborhood. I still 
don't know which came first, the hawk calling or its discovery of the 
owl (which might have inspired the calls?). Any thoughts? My first 
guess is to think that the Cooper's somewhat nuthatch-like series of 
calls may have drawn out the screech owl from behind the plum, where 
English ivy covers my neighbor's huge black cherry. How else would 
the Cooper's have found the owl? It had been fairly well concealed 
while calling then was supplanted by the screech owl. I'm a bit mystified.

Howard Youth

Bethesda, MD