This is what I would see if I moved off the little step just outside our bedroom where the "blind" is. The greenish shrub in the center is a forsythia in which Hermit thrushes, Bewick's wrens and Oak titmice fuss and forage. Photo was taken last spring and the ladder is no longer propped up there.
This is the side of the "blind" I stand on. The odd-looking thing in the middle of the black cloth is where the scope goes and I pin the material around the lens, so Olive doesn't see any movement.
And this is what Olive sees when she sits in the opening of her box. The green material is shade cloth which I put there several years ago. Obviously, the hole is for the lens of the spotting scope.
On Nov. 2, I was watching Olive as she prepared to leave. Suddenly, as I watched through the scope, she became fixated on - what seemed to me to be - me! She stared at something that I could not see and dared not attempt to see. Then she flew - straight at me! In a second or so I heard a small scritching sound and then she flew to a pin oak about 15' from me, and in view of me without the scope! I ran inside and told Ivan that she had caught something and was in the pin oak. We rushed outside with our binocs and watched her toss some small thing into her mouth. The only thing we saw well was a short tail as it went down her throat! Mind you, where I stand - and where she had seen a MOUSE - is about 50' from her box. This all happened at 6:15PM, just after the sun had gone down and dusk was settling. Talk about remarkable vision!
