Waiting for the Owls

By Chuck Hennet — September 5, 2025

I’m waiting for the owls.

In a way, they’re part of why I began the bird monitor in the first place. Given their nocturnal ways, I always wondered if I was simply missing their calls—never outside at the right time to hear them. I wanted to know for sure.

It had been years since I’d heard one here on the farm. Then last November, a Great Horned Owl began calling—regularly, especially after dusk. I’m guessing one owl became two, and the pair stuck around until April 2025, when their voices fell silent again.

I can’t fully explain what I feel when I hear an owl here. It would be easy to say it feels magical, or that it stirs some deep, half-remembered part of childhood. But neither of those quite fit. It’s something quieter. Something more.

So in part, I set up the first bird monitor to find out whether I was missing them. It turns out, I wasn’t. They simply aren’t here now.

A hundred-acre farm of mixed timber and meadow. Plenty of snags. Plenty of raptors—the daytime kind. And now, three listening stations instead of one. Still, I wait for that first detection BirdNET will tag as an owl.

Nearly a million bird song detections since mid-June 2025. Each one labeled with a species and confidence score. So many birds I’d never even heard of, detected by BirdNET. Not quite probabilities—but certainly possibilities.

And yet: no owls.

But as September ripens, and the baseball season leans toward its autumn reckoning, I feel hopeful. I believe the Great Horneds will return.

And when they do, I’ll know. And I’ll go out after dusk and listen.