Once a barred owl set up camp near my house for part of a season. He would perch strategically in the trees, here or there, his feathers ruffling in the icy wind; unmoving, unblinking for hours and hours, like a statue, until night cloaked him. The one time I caught him in flight, it was breathtaking, like something from another world. Here is the owl at dusk beneath the rattling leaves of a beech tree.