midnight screams

so this weekend we were sleeping and we heard this screaming coming from outside and it got the dogs all worked up and barking. it only lasted for a few minutes and then it was gone so we kind of brushed it off as being some animal and didn't think more about it. we thought that maybe it was from a bald eagle because we had one of those in our tree one day last week. really cool to see so close. this is one of my pictures of it i really wanted to get one of it with its wings spread out, but it wasn't flying away and it was way too cold to stay out and watch it all night. we went back inside and when we came back out about 5 minuets later it was gone. oh well. back to the screaming, well last night at about 2:00am it was back. it is an awful sound like a banshee screaming, at least how i imagine one would scream. so i did some research today to discover what it was and i think that it is a barn owl. it must be staying close to our house maybe in our barn even. anyway it is really unnerving to be sleeping and then to hear that awful scream. here is a website that has the sound if you are at all curious as to what is keeping us up at night. here is a picture too, it looks really cute but the sound coming out of it is awful. speaking of birds and another bird sighting i had this winter. we were driving to town and i saw a snow owl on a fence post. i said to phill that hedwig was on that post and he had no idea what i was talking about so i had to explain to him didn't have a camera then but it was cool i have never seen one of those in the wild before.