Night of the bogsuckers

72 barred owl
(total on this date in 2006: 64)

In the birder equivalent of an evening at the movies, several of us gathered at Brad's and sat in lawn chairs by the backyard basketball court. At dusk through a rising mist we heard male woodcocks peenting in the valley, then glimpsed their wide, wing-twittering upward spirals before they coasted down to the ground to wait for admiring females. It sounded like this.