This grand Oak grows in the garden of my ancestral home in Hertfordshire, by which I mean the house I grew up in. In fact it was only a sapling when I was only a sapling. I spent several enchanted minutes looking up at it last night.

 I heard an owl screeching and on one of its branches I saw the owl silhouetted against the night sky (too dark to take a photo unfortunately so the one above was taken this afternoon). That was a thrilling moment because there have always been owls in and around this garden despite being in the middle of a largish town. As a child my bedroom window looked out onto the garden and I vividly recall hearing them hooting in the darkness. But I've never seen one out there until last night!

 This was a solitary screecher but I still hear the distinctive 'too-wit too-woo' some nights as I have done for decades. It was only more recently I learned this is the cry of the Tawny Owl, in fact two of them. The female Tawny Owl calls 'too-wit' and the male responds 'too-woo'.