While eating breakfast this morning, looking out onto the meadow and watching birds and squirrels on the feeder, I noticed that suddenly everyone left. The feeder was empty of wildlife, a sure sign a hawk or other large bird was nearby. Sure enough, I looked up into the bigleaf maple and there it was, a Barred Owl. I think it’s the same one I saw a few months in the same place. I casually finished my breakfast pretty sure it would fly away at any moment, but it didn’t. Okay, so I grabbed my camera and took several shots from inside the window which were blurry. No good. I knew if I wanted a decent photo I’d have to take the chance that it wouldn’t fly when I went outside. No problem, to my surprise he didn’t seem to care. I took a few shots from a ‘safe distance’ then thought ‘what the heck, let’s try to get closer.  Stepping down from the porch onto the grass under the tree I quickly took a few more shots. Then I realized it really didn’t care, and obviously felt safe at that height. Heck, it was probably laughing knowing full well I couldn’t scale the tree. It was a little foggy and pretty dark but a few of the photos turned out. The owl stayed in the tree until the sun came out when it probably flew to the darker forest surrounding our meadow. What a nice way to start the day!