Minerva was back. And by the time I noticed her, perched in a decrepit spruce tree adjacent to my bird feeder, she may have been back for quite a while. And she lingered, perched long enough for me to pull up a chair by the window and observe her for quite a while.

Or, is it I who am back? For all I know she has been there all winter and I am the one who has been away, in her estimation – with the windows shut and owl sounds blocked or remote since last fall. As we open the windows of summer, we rejoin the avian audience.

Even the deer traipsing across the yard did not distract her from … what? Watching, like the Lionel Messi of birds, apparently doing nothing and preoccupied with things far from the game – but that’s his winning technique. And just when you think an owl is asleep, she’ll whip her head around in the direction of some imperceptible woodland chirp or scurry to make a scoring play. The mice have little defense but silence and stillness and wishful thinking. They’ll never know what ate them. An owl has serrated feathers that make their flight inaudible. But they might hear the famous question: “Who cooks for you?” echoing from above. No one cooks. Dinner is mouse carpaccio.

Illustration by Ariel Rose Nelson

“My” owl always seems to be sitting on a branch where least expected.

One day, that happened to be on a level branch in the oak at the end of my yard – a superb hunting blind. The bark is gripped and worn from use. For another rendezvous, it’s high up in my apple tree, a foggy blur on gnarly limbs. But every perch must have a direct line of sight on the ground where the chipmunks, mice, voles, and red squirrels feed. An owl manages to simultaneously be part of the foreground and background of the view, or secreted in a corner of the scene, like the horse in Breughel.

One has the feeling that by the time you realize you are, in fact, watching an owl, the owl has already been watching you for quite a while. Try and sneak up on an owl. They know your plan before you do.

Was this the same owl who made a ghostly appearance on my trail camera over the winter, wings extended in a midnight swoop on a hapless critter? Hard to tell. She was caught in a flash with that same inscrutable gaze – then off.

Several Barred owls were calling last night from deeper in the woods, that special evening tide alert to fellow owls across the field and hiding in the opposite spruces. Time to be up and hunting. I look forward to my summer owl patrol, sitting in my dooryard listening and watching, hoping for a glimpse.

It’s a full-time job waiting for an owl to appear or reappear; listening for the dusk serenade; pretending to be having a conversation, however one-sided.