Community Corner
Knock-Knock; Hooo Is It?
An owl visited a Millett Lane family's porch railing late last week.
The Fafel family had an interesting visitor last Friday.
He didn;t stay for dinner and wasn't much of a conversationailst but was fascinating nonetheless.
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It was an owl.
To our eye it looks like a barred owl.
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The owl took up residency on the Millett Lane home's porch railing and was kind enough to stand for a series of photographs and be fancied by numerous onlookers.
Eventually, Steven Fafel got to see the owl fly away.
According to Wingmasters, a New England nonprofit that teaches people about birds of prey, the barred owl has an impressive wingspan, 43 inches, which is especially long for such a light bird.
They are known as silent flyers but call out in various ways — they bay like a hound, scream, shriek and whistle. Their best-known call, according to the Wingmasters website, "is a series of eight accented hoots, in groups of four: hoohoo-hoohoo, hoohoo- hoohooaw. That descending note at the end is characteristic of the barred owl."
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