For owls, invisibility is a defense or disguise; for us, it’s a privilege, one that—if we’re lucky—may yield an owl sighting. Owls teach us what we can learn from an animal just by listening to it. They show us how distinctive they are as individuals, idiosyncratic, with as much personality as we have, and with a full range of feelings and emotions often expressed in deeply understated ways. They tell us that to get at their truths, we need to understand them over time. It’s not enough to seek quick glimpses. We think we know something about them, and then—poof!—they dispel our theories,
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