The Sock Wars

Early last spring, Gambel’s Quail started sniffing around the owl box I’d installed in our front yard. Those guys will nest anywhere, it seems, and while I was amused to see them looking domestic 20 feet above ground, I was worried, too, about what would happen if they hatched chicks: the entrance to the box is a good six inches above the floor, a considerable distance even for those acrobatic fluffballs. Solution? I clambered up there and stapled an old sock to the inside of the box, figuring that it would serve as a ladder should the quaillettes need to escape.

The adults gave it up, though, and in August a Western Screech-Owl moved in. Whatever the other advantages of her/his new home, the sock was not among them, and the bird has worried at it constantly, tossing it out and dragging it in, sometimes leaving it flapping in the wind for days at a time.

But this morning the owl claimed victory. The sock lies, tattered and sullied, on the limb below the box, and the otherwise inscrutable face of our houseguest shows just the hint of a triumphal sneer.