Owls have always been somewhat of a blind spot for me in terms of finding birds. I love owls (who doesn’t?) and spend inordinate amounts of time in their habitat, but rarely do I see these mystical birds.

It’s not that I never see them. I’ve seen the occasional barred owl and a few great-horned owls in my day, and even snowy owls a handful of times, but the sightings are few and far between.

There was a winter a few years back when everyone was seeing barred owls. I was able to see a few during that spurt. Remember the “winter of the snowy owl?” The Arctic birds were showing up everywhere along the coast and even inland. I saw three snowy owls that winter. Then there was the great gray owl that delighted birders in Newport in 2017. I saw that one too. Under “normal” circumstances, however, my owl sightings are rare.

With my actual owl sightings at a minimum, I was happy to vicariously experience a neat owl experience relayed to me by Mary Ellen of Keene. Mind you, she and her family live not far from downtown Keene.

Earlier this month, she heard a high-pitched screechy call that she did not recognize. The Merlin app identified it as a barred owl. At that moment, she could not find the bird to confirm the ID. Later in the evening, as she was bringing in her birdfeeders for the night, she heard it again.

“I heard the sound again and went to the front yard to see if I could locate the owl. I saw not one, but three,” she wrote in an email.

By this time, her husband and son joined the adventure and concluded that they were young barred owl siblings. They watched and waited to see if any adults would show up. Sure enough, two more owls appeared and “seemed to be feeding the young.”

A few evenings later, two of the birds were in the yard again calling.

“We watched the young ones as we spotted a squirrel on a nearby tree and both birds went after the squirrel but missed,” she wrote. “We had wondered earlier this year why we hadn’t seen many squirrels and chipmunks in our yard. I think we now know the reason.”

The third youngster showed up at this point, and Mary Ellen and her family decided to give them their space. She surmised that they fledglings were at the stage of learning how to hunt but still relying on their parents for food.

When I lived at my previous home in the woods, I would occasionally hear barred owls at night and heard the screeching of the young ones a few times. It is one of those sounds that makes you ask yourself “what the heck was that?” when you heard it for the first time. The first time hearing a fox scream at night elicits the same reaction.

It’s always nice to hear bird stories about youngsters thriving.

This spring and summer, I have personally found the nests of robins, eastern phoebes, yellow warblers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, red-shouldered hawks and a few others. I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the daily progress of the robin and phoebe babies. It’s always a thrill to see the next generation of birds take flight.