A Raptor on the Roof

This evening our neighbor sent me a photograph that solved a mystery around our house. Martina and I had been wondering why we had not seen many birds in our backyard lately. We had not seen mockingbirds, purple finches, or even sparrows around the house. We had, however, seen a fair number of rabbits, though their numbers had seemed to have thinned out as of late.

When I first looked at the picture, which was of my neighbor's garage taken at two in the morning, there was a car in the driveway, and I figured my neighbor had sent me a picture of a creep stalking the neighborhood. However, when I called and he pointed out the owl on top of his roof, everything made sense.

Here is a cropped version of the picture my neighbor took. Even though the photo now appears grainy like the ones of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, I still used The Cornell Lab's Merlin birding app to try to identify the owl. According to the app, this nocturnal visitor was most likely an Eastern Screech-Owl.