Crows and the Owl

This morning Mr. Tugboat and I went to his favorite section of woods by the pond and we were alerted to some sort of aerial kerfuffle.  

We are accustomed by now in New Hampshire to encountering wild turkeys, often scores of them in their silent flocks, drifting in and out of our line of sight, in their sleek, noble way.

But today there was the raucous cawing of black birds, crows, but big crows, about a dozen of them vocally flapping thirty feet above us among the pine tops. 
Then we saw the object of their derision:  An owl. Brown and big as a Red Tail Hawk, and he flapped about twenty yards, surrounded by indignant crows, before alighting on a branch above my head, from which he looked down at me and Mr. Tugboat with an unperturbed cast of his owl eyes in my direction. He did not linger long in his assessment of me, then looked around and took off again, followed by his hectoring crows, who clearly regarded him with the same opprobrium Donald Trump hurls at Mexicans swimming across the Rio Grande.

He flew between the pine trees gracefully, silently and he made the crows look awkward and amateurish by comparison, a thoroughbred running among Clydesdale horses. 

I've not seen an owl in daylight before, not in the wild. But there he was just fifty yards from the duck pond, thick with mallards and home in the warm weather to a pair of great blue herons. 

Mr. Boat was most impressed.