We have some hooters in our neighborhood. Not the kind associated with carbonated beverages and megacalorie pub grub, though. I’m talking about actual owls.

We often hear them at dusk and at dawn, their “Who? You?” booming out from the hidden depths of our farm grove. The hoots of a great horned owl are spooky. Their calls cause my hair to stand on end and my toes to curl even though I’m not on their menu. At least I don’t think so.

The owls will hold lengthy conversations. I don’t know what they’re saying but would surmise that they’re discussing domestic issues. The female of the species is larger than the male, which leaves no doubt about who rules the roost in an owl family.

Great horned owls lay their eggs in February. The mercury can plummet to near absolute zero in February, so incubating eggs at that time of year might seem like a dopey idea. But there’s a method to this madness. The owlets will hatch just as mice and voles are emerging from their wintertime digs and beginning to produce young.

It probably isn’t a bad way to go. You leave your squalid wintertime quarters for the first time in months. You sniff the fresh, cool air; romance is on your mind. Then, without warning, your destiny silently swoops down and carries you off and you become enjoined with mystical beings who live in the sky.

One February afternoon some years ago, I espied a smallish owl sitting in the window of our empty chicken coop. I stealthily approached it and snapped a photo. An Internet search revealed that our visitor was an eastern screech owl. I’d never seen one up close but had heard them during bitterly cold, dead-still winter nights. Their high-pitched, whinnying cries always gave me the shivers and a severe case of the heebie-jeebies.

Shortly after our cat, Sparkles, came to live with us, I took her up into the hayloft of our old barn, home to approximately a kazillion sparrows. I wanted to introduce Sparkles to the idea of hunting, which, it turned out, was like introducing a fish to the idea of swimming.

On that particular afternoon, we discovered a small raptor flitting about in the hayloft. The startled avian tried to escape but couldn’t find the exit. I managed to capture the featherbrain and took a photo of it before releasing it outdoors. The Internet told me that it was a Cooper’s hawk and that it eats other birds. I wondered how the owls felt about their new neighbor.

A red-tailed hawk frequently perches on an old tree in our cattle yard. During the summertime, I’ll hear its trademark “scree!” call as it circles overhead. Some of our resident blue jays have learned how to imitate this call, demonstrating a level of skullduggery that would be the envy of any politician.

We will sometimes catch sight of a bald eagle or two. Eagles are a majestic bird, truly worthy of serving as our national symbol. A bald eagle seems huge, with a wingspan that appears to rival that of a 747. Whenever I glimpse an eagle gliding overhead, I congratulate myself for having acquired enough ballast to be an unattractive target. At least I hope so. Maybe I’d better have another donut just to be safe.

Despite their aura of regal pomposity, bald eagles aren’t above eating roadkill. On several occasions, I’ve caught them noshing on a roadside deer carcass. But what true American could pass up a free all-you-can-eat buffet?

Birds of prey are by no means the only creatures to share our space. Almost every evening, we hear coyotes howling in the distance. It’s not uncommon to catch the nightfall yipping of a fox or smell the pungent perfume of a passingskunk. It’s a reminder that we live in their environment, not the other way around.

Great horned owls are among the few predators that will tackle a skunk. This alone is reason enough to put up with the owls’ longwinded nocturnal confabs.

There have recently been reports of mountain lion sightings in our area. This was poo-pooed by wildlife authorities until someone captured images of a cougar on a game camera. An inconvenient truth was thus brought to light.

The game cam was located about 20 miles from our farm, a distance that a cougar could easily cover in a short while. An adult puma can hit speeds of up to 50 mph when it’s pursuing its prey.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should lose some of that extra ballast. But not before I sample the wings at a particular owl-themed pub.