Thanks. This was extreme south Bay Area, CA. It was very striking, even spooooky to see these white apparitions in the tree, hooting softly (which I’m sure is what made my companion notice them). I even doubt my memory, it seems too weird a sight for an evening dining out in semi rural CA. They looked pure white. I want to say I saw 4-6.
Great shots beowulff!
I’m guessing a family of barn owls - mother and several almost fully grown young. They’re probably the most common and conspicuous owl in the Bay Area (they do very well in suburbs and are particularly fond of nesting in ornamental palm trees). Though they are tawny from behind and sometimes a bit in front, if they’re facing forward they can also look very pale, especially at night. When they swoop by you in the dark they usually look very ghostly. Add in that like a lot of owls they are pretty silent flyers, but that they sometimes make a truly unholy-sounding screech (that first call) when they’re flying and they very much fit the spooky Halloween bill.
ETA: Saw a Nelson’s Sparrow today, a very skulky marsh rarity in California as you can see from the range map. One irregularly pops up most years at a particular marsh, where it draws excited ‘twitchers’ 
. Couldn’t get a photo, though.
Okay, that image is pretty convincing. They were barn owls. Thanks!
I forgot to mention that the scientific name Tyto alba literally means ‘white owl’ .
I wish I could have taken a picture of “mine”. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket fast enough. After my sighting I of course Googled wild turkeys in MN. There was a lot of interesting info. The best fact that I read is that an adult turkey is one of the most voracious tick predators around, an individual may eat 200 or more ticks in a day! I hope the turkeys stick around.
We put out shelled corn for the deer, turkeys, and crows. A neighbor does the same. The turkey flock visits each feeding station every day. It’s nice around Thanksgiving to sit drinking coffee, watching the turkeys strut around our yard, the males displaying. But open a door to sneak a picture and the scurry off.
Mine aren’t in our yard…yet. When I saw them I was in the woods with the dogs. Dogs + Wild Turkeys = Chaos. So everything was moving so fast, I had no time to get my phone out of my pocket, tap on camera and take a pic. I did take a pic of some of them that flew up into the trees close by, but it just looks like black blobs in the tree. When I tried to get closer, they’d fly to another tree. One of these days though I expect to find them in the backyard and then I can get my picture. 
Time to get this thread rolling again.
Updates: that was on 20 Nov. I got back out to Brockham on the 22nd, and once again there were 3 cattle egrets in the same field. I rode by as much of the surrounding low level pasture as there is road or trail access to (took the cyclocross bike), but didn’t see any others.
For various reasons I wasn’t able to ride out that way again until today (8 Dec, on the road bike), and I saw two cattle egrets, once again in the same field. (In truth I would have been happier if there had been three or zero, but that’s another story.)
Well, I have to conclude that they’re a regular feature there, but as I have never seen more than three I’m thinking they are part of a larger colony and are flying in to feed - possibly from Lingfield, maybe from another colony that I haven’t yet found.
I’ll keep looking. More news when I have it.
j
Try though I did with my headlamp, never saw, but heard 2 great horned owls having “choir practice” in the trees right across from my office - Merlin confirmed the diagnosis for me.
Things I found out in the last couple of days.
Sunday: on a cloudy winter’s day, under the cover of trees, as dusk falls - an albino squirrel doesn’t half stand out. Yep, we saw it again, within twenty or so meters of the last sighting, in Priory Park in Reigate. Nearly a month on from the first sighting - so I did a little google, because with that amount of elapsed time, and in such a public place, it’s going to be in local newspapers and on neighborhood Facebook groups, right? Nothing. Very odd. I took photos, but very bad ones - it’s extremely wary; and if I was someone’s prey and stood out like that, I’d be wary too. Decent pic at post 2771.
Today: out on a long bike ride, I went through Brockham to check on the cattle egrets. This time: one. It’s strange, not just because on successive visits there have been three, then two, now one bird(s) (like a macabre avian mystery); but because I’ve never seen a solitary cattle egret before - they seem to be very social. Strange.
And another “never before”, riding back, I turned onto a ridge road and I heard a bird call overhead. No more than 20 meters away, a red kite was soaring alongside me and calling constantly (what it sounds like). I’ve never thought about this, but I’m sure I haven’t heard a red kite calling before - so,interesting; plus, as I’ve noted before, there’s something magical about cycling alongside a wild animal. Fabulous.
j
The herd was out tonight - 8 deer in the front yard at dusk.
Very foggy morning - pleasant walk, but not very conducive to photography with a smaller sensor camera. But it did clear a bit towards the end and I ran into an active pair of White-tailed Kites.
A kite, kiting (hovering in place as it scans the ground for prey):
Kiting success, but quite unwilling to share.
White-tailed kites do this spectacular mating ritual where the male will catch something (usually a meadow vole like this one, they aren’t quite specialists but they seem to strongly prefer voles) and flipping upside down mid-air will hand it off to the female in flight as she passes above him. But not this time . He/she wasn’t having any of that and spent some time munching it down on a fence post.
Wow. Those are beautiful.
Yeah, wonderful photos.
j
And beautiful birds! What fun to see them.
Okay, got that reversed with the mating ritual. This is a shot from 2013 just post-hand-off. It’s the male right side up, just after handing a vole to the female below him that had been upside down and taking it from him. So she’s clutching the vole and shrieking as they start to separate. She looks a little bigger, but I think that is either an artifact of posture or perhaps just a little natural variation. Unlike a lot raptors, they have little or no sexual dimorphism in white-tailed kites…
I’ve seen barn swallows “play” using a duck feather. They pick up a feather and fly with it, periodically dropping it then grabbing it out of the air.
Gorgeous photos @Tamerlane
Yesterday I saw … (been busy)
Went for a walk, up towards the local park. At the top of the road, a ball of furious activity landed with a gentle thump on the sidewalk in front of me.
.
Somebody on Reddit says
The female blackbird is aggressive in the spring when it competes with other females for a good nesting territory, and although fights are less frequent, they tend to be more violent.
Well, it’s been unseasonably warm, so I guess it feels spring-like. A bird could be fooled. Jeez are they violent - I stepped out of the way; the brawl broke up and then reformed so close to me that I was looking directly down at them - they were completely oblivious to my presence - two female blackbirds, claws dug into each other, beaks viciously scissored, beating the crap out of each other with their wings. It went on for an age - thirty seconds maybe? - until a car coming up the road spooked them and thy broke up and flew off. Man, that was ferocious. Happy Christmas.
j
It’s been unusually warm here too. I planted some ranunculus corms the last week of November and they are coming up already. That is supposed to be happening in February or March, not now!