A special morning

This morning was very special. My husband and I woke at about 6am - still dark in wintery Cape Town - to the sounds of an owl outside our window. We listened for a few moments and then J got up and peered through the curtains.

"It's right here on the garage roof!"

I clambered out of bed and looked, and there it was. A big dark shape on the roof. My husband went off to fetch his new telescope but before he returned the owl had flown off.

Disappointed, I climbed back into the warm bed, but J, setting up the telescope at the window anyway, soon said, "There it is! On top of the pine tree!"

There is a huge pine tree in a garden across the road, and perched rather precariously on the very top little branch, was our owl. Now with our telescope lined up, we could take a proper look. It was a beautiful big bird with long, thin ears and huge talons. It sat facing away from us, but occasionally it would turn its head and we could see its face. It was too dark to really make out its colouring, but later we found a similar-looking bird in my mother's bird guide: a Cape Eagle Owl. Sadly it was too dark to get a photo, but this will give you an idea of what we saw:

The wind was blowing lightly and the large owl had to perform quite a balancing act on its little perch. Before long it flew off. We could still hear its ghostly "Hoo hooo" near the house, but we couldn't see it.

I went back to bed for a second time, but J, wide awake now, took the telescope to the upper deck at the back of the house to look at the moon. You see, we are now experiencing a supermoon, with the full moon at the biggest it will be this whole year. Yesterday night we had lain outside on the roof to look at it and it was so bright we could barely see any stars! (J did see an impressive shooting star, though - part of an annual meteor shower that was mostly eclipsed by the moon.) The moon was so bright in fact that it hurt our eyes, and this morning, when I got out of bed for the third (but not final) time, I took my sunglasses along to watch the moon go down.

It was huge and bright and dazzling, and watching it sink behind the mountain was quite awe-inspiring. We took turns watching it through the telescope as it edged away bit by bit. And then it was gone and you would never have known there had been a giant moon hovering over the mountain a few moments before.

And then, with the sun starting to rise, we went back to bed (third time for me) for a last little bit of sleep before getting up for church. A very special, magical morning.