Last Thursday my next door neighbor dropped by for a catchup.  I'd not seen her since early December.  We sat and talked and had tea for a couple of hours.  One of the subjects we chatted about was the birdlife in our neighborhood.  I was telling her about the egrets that come in to roost in the big trees opposite, she'd never noticed them as her place faces a different direction.  She in turn told me about a pair of owls that have their nest under the palm fronds of a big palm in the front yard of the place around the corner.  I walk past this clump of palms almost every day and had never noticed them.  She said they'd been there for years.  How cool!  So today in the rain as I went on my errand to the post office and drugstore I paid attention, and there was one of the owls peeking out.  Delighted.

It looks to be a barn owl and after a quick google it does appear that they regularly make their homes in palm trees.  We hear owls often throughout the neighborhood, so nice to know that 2 are such close neighbors.

Apologies for crappy photo quality, raining hard but not as hard as it became later in the afternoon - like being in a carwash.  Tomorrow will be back to dry and sunny.  The uzhe.