An Owl? Here?

Before I tell you about the encounter I had tonight, let me first say that I have been hearing it off and on for the last year or two without knowing quite what it was. While I thought what i was hearing was an Owl, I was told that it was "squirrels or something." My answer to that was "Squirrels don't go hooo-hoo-hoo-hooo." So as I was walking back up to the house from putting the chickens in their hen house, I heard it again: hooo-hoo-hoo-hooo. Using the large flashlight that was more like a small spotlight, I aimed at the trees that I heard the noise.

That's when I first saw it. A real live Owl that happened to allow me to see it tonight. I only saw a portion of it before it disappeared into the branches of a 70-foot tall Giant Sequoia. Hoping that it would let me see it again, I kept the light on the branch until, less than 30 seconds later, it flew out in a swooping motion to a branch that was higher with no other branches in its way while it looked for food. At the same time that happened, something smaller either flew out from the same spot or flew by on the other side of the tree. As it went so fast, I wasn't sure if it was a juvenile, a bat, or another type of bird. A few minutes later, the Owl either got tired of  me shining the light at it or there was dinner to catch and it flew off into the neighbors' yard.

Since I could not get a very good look at it, due to it being dark outside and since the bird was 60 feet up in a tree that was 70 or more feet away, I decided to consult my bird books. Due to the size of it , I estimated it was between 1 and 2 feet in length, I quickly narrowed the list down to five possibilities. Finding it  difficult to narrow it down even more, I went online to hear the sounds of those particular Owls. That website is The Owl Pages for anyone that wants to know. When I found an soundbite that sounded similar, I exclaimed "Eureka, that's it!" and went on to hear a second soundbite of the same type of Owl to verify.

What I saw tonight was the Great Horned Owl. The soundbite that sounds closest to it on the website was the one that says: Pair calling--Mid-march night at Pecks' Lake Doug--Von Gausig. The soundbite is also here. If I had my camera with me, I would have tried to take it's picture.