Barred Owl, Kenny's

The news out of Washington continues to get so much worse—oh, Trump appointed a Nazi sympathizer as Chief Strategist... that's certainly a hopeful sign—that it's hard to even turn on NPR to catch the morning news. Therefore, I was eternally grateful that the only thing I heard on the development front was a call around 8 a.m. from my neighbor that he'd spotted an owl and invited me to come over to take a look. I grabbed the camera and the Sigma supertelephoto and raced out the door, dashed through the woods, and met him along his dog-walking path. No more than 100 feet down the trail and sleepily enjoying the sunshine in a young Beech was a Barred Owl. In these incredibly trying times, the sight was a genuine blessing... and a perfect photo op of a bird often heard but almost never seen, save as a silhouette in the tree tops on a full moon night. Maybe the Barred, the very symbol of wisdom, would spread some of that precious commodity over our land.