John Murnane wrapped an injured owl in a towel in the Presidio last June. An owl has been turning up in his garden ever since.

A great horned owl that was found injured near Mountain Lake Park in the Presidio in June last year has been coming back ever since to the garden of John Murnane, who carried it out of the park, Mission Local reported on 20 September.

Murnane, 78, is a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, and a retired molecular biologist who worked in cancer research. He has written three novels, photographs the birds of the Presidio and volunteers as a waterbird docent on Alcatraz, where he learned to handle an injured bird.

The call

On 9 June last year his neighbour Cindy Samucha, who uses a wheelchair, came across the owl on the ground near Mountain Lake Park with an injured right wing. She kept the curious dogs away from it and waited for animal care and control, who did not come.

I know who to call: John, the bird guy.Cindy Samucha, to Mission Local

The towel

Murnane put on a thick coat and gloves and went to the park. The owl hobbled away from him and snapped its beak until he got a towel over it.

After that, it just melted.John Murnane, to Mission Local

He says he did not know it then, but wildlife rescuers have a saying, towels for owls, because once the towel goes over them they relax.

Ninety minutes

A wildlife centre in Marin County would not take the bird because it was not a Marin resident, so he drove it himself to the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA in Burlingame, where he had taken birds from Alcatraz before. The two of them spent an hour and a half in rush-hour traffic.

He was in the back seat, and I felt sorry for him, so I was talking softly to him most of the time.John Murnane, to Mission Local

The kitchen window

Weeks later the rehabilitators released the owl in the wooded part of the Presidio near his house. Not long after that his wife looked out of the kitchen window and shrieked.

I turned around, and it was looking right at me.John Murnane, to Mission Local

For a few months after that he saw an owl in the garden almost every week, and he still sees or hears one there regularly. He dissected a pellet left on his patio and found a rat’s skull in it. The owls of Mountain Lake come down to the Inner Richmond, he says, because they eat the rats.

He had photographed this owl as a chick and as a fledgling in a nest nearby, and after the rescue it sat on one particular branch in the Presidio. On the days an owl was in his garden, that branch was empty, because he checked. He will not say it is the same bird.

It could be the same one, but, you know, people start to think you’re crazy if you start telling them that.John Murnane, to Mission Local

The one in his garden hoots, leaves pellets on the patio and looks in through the kitchen window.