I wish you could see this

Dusk is my favorite time of day. You can see swifts playing Red Baron. With their darting around, perspectives get really funny--it appears that there are different sized swifts. The bats come soon after, much smaller than the swifts, flying like moths. Sometimes the swifts dive at them just for fun, or maybe they're mocking them. Soon the sky is filled with swifts and bats. And then, suddenly, the swifts stop playing and get to work. They woosh in tight figure eights, keeping an exact distance between each other as they decimate hordes of gnats and mosquitos.

You can hear the swifts during the day inside the gables on historic buildings, pagodas and churches. They sound like bats should sound like if only we could hear them.

One night we were lucky to see a Barn Owl on our daily walk by the canal. It perched on a sign right above our heads, swiveled its head around, and with a squeak took off like a huge phosphorescent ghost. There was no way of photographing it but I sure tried.

Last night no such luck. We were run over by drunks. Being run over by motorcycles isn't quite the same as being run over by cars, I'm happy to say.