It's those owls again

There are odd moments that you just know will become part of your life's lexicon to be shared, told and retold to friends and others til the end of your storytelling time. Small moments can be as precious as the big occasions.
The other night, after dinner, sitting quietly with a book by the fireplace, a whistling, vibrating, not entirely musical Schoenbergesque trilling echoed precisely down the chimney, landing directly in my ear.
The fireplace is big - years ago it housed the farmhouse range - and because there is no central heating and the need is great, contains a sizeable woodburner, the flue concentrating what was a vast open chimney into a more smokeless and comfortable arrangement. I quietly opened the doors of the stove to let the sound through even more keenly. Although it had never happened before I knew at once that there was a barn owl hooting straight down the chimney. The sound bounced around the room, truly eery and utterly unlike the infuriating but friendly tapping on the window of the blue tits munching by day on the linseed oil putty.
Opening the front door slowly, with lights kept off and dogs kept in, softly stepping across the cobbles to get a view, there in the moonlight, perched on the chimney pot was the owl.
I think it was enjoying the echo, like a child clapping from inside a huge concrete pipe in a playground. To me, it was a direct communication from the owl asking that the barn restorations be swiftly started to ensure it had a new home.
Two nights later it was back, and standing in the farmyard in the pitch black dark I listened to three owls communicating across the farm from different vantage points. I daren't mention that it will be at least a year before the barns are completed.