There wasn’t a fly out this evening.  Neither owl flew out, and like last night we wondered why.  We searched the area and found nothing.

Then about an hour after the usual fly out, two raccoons made their terrible cry and the female owl popped up to investigate.  I missed capturing the first pop up as I had already put away my equipment, but I captured images during two more periods of raccoon crying.

No one flew out this evening.  Have they moved?  Is something wrong, or is it just the cold?

Tonight, we only got to see the male owl.  He flew out, landed on a nearby branch, preened and then went north.  We looked for the female, but she did not come out of her cavity.

The male was out standing guard when I arrived on Wednesday evening.

I arrived around 5:30 after fly out to find one owl quietly sitting on a branch outside the roost tree.  The owl stayed in the same place for at least thirty minutes.  Was it the female waiting for a snack or the male waiting for the female.  I couldn’t tell on a cold, misty night without binoculars.

One of the three Eastern Screech-Owls pairs is in a very public place, and "Owl Mania" broke out over the weekend in Central Park, with far too many visitors descending on the pair.

Although my reporting about them did not disclose their location, I feel that posting any more owl photographs will add to the "Owl Mania". So, I’m going to do what I’ve done the last few years and stop reporting about owls until the late spring.