The Visitor

If you care to watch out, the light evenings expose one of our regular visitors -- a barn owl cruises the paddocks a little after nine. It looks like a ghost, a big white bird flapping hard so as to fly slowly but totally silent. In the three years it's been coming, I've never seen it stoop but I suppose these summer visits must pay off.

In the winter, when I'm walking across the fields well before dawn, I hear owls calling in the dark, but I can't tell what sort, or whether they're hunting or socialising. Sometimes they sound like they have a warning for me.