The call of nature.

I was woken at four o'clock this morning. And I don't even resent it. No, I didn't need a wee (the title's just a cunning play on words, as you'll see).
There I was happily asleep (I'm assuming I was happy - I was asleep after all!) when my consciousness was pierced by the noise of a bird. It wasn't the 'morning everyone' sort of tweet that you get at that time in the morning. No, this was a more urgent, "TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET" (It certainly felt like it was going on and on). I duly rose and went to the window. I guess if we'd shut the window I'd have avoided the noise... But on opening the curtain, I saw, about 8 foot away from me, sat on the verandah roof, an owl. Now I couldn't say for sure exactly what type of owl it was. That's partly because I don't know my owls (have since looked in my bird book so I know for next time) and partly because it was, after all, four o'clock in the morning. I think we can safely rule out the long-eared and the little owl. I don't think it was a barn owl, because I don't think it had any white on it. The short eared owl is the wrong colour, so I'm guessing it was a tawny owl. The other thing is, given that there was a bird being very wound up by it, that would point to a bird-eating owl (probably a baby - note the last post here about nature's ways!) This would appear to rule out the barn owl. My only issue is that the rspb say a Tawny is the size of a pigeon, and I'd have said it was bigger than that... Maybe it's because they sort of stand up more than other birds...
Anyway, it was all very exciting. The bird that was TWEETing (no, not in the online sense) stopped, because I opened the window, and the owl swooped gracefully off.
Loving creation. It was an awesome idea!
The picture below is copyright rspb.