Owls in Neighborhood
General Topic
Been watching these owls on edge of cornfield just behind our neighborhood. These are the adults I'll end with some of the owlets in nest.
Very cool pics, John. What flavors of owls? Ear tufts almost look too long for a Great Horned Owl. Long eared?
Thanks - I think greathorned
Thanks, John!! Love to hear them in the hollows in late October and November at dark.
"Who cooks for you!" I hear them every night!
Wow John pretty Cool ! Look at those sharp talons . Awesome birds
Nice photos John..awesome
Great pics
"Who cooks for you" = barred owl. We have a lot of those too but less great horned owls around the house. I had a barred owl come straight for my red feather fletching in a treestand one evening and I thought I was toast. She veered off at the last second.
Gawd lost: She must have been close if you could tell the gender.
Great pix John, thanks for sharing...
""Who cooks for you" = barred owl" Yep, different species from photoed...
All those pix are of Great Horned Owls, the famed "Hoot" owl, although they make different vocalizations, some will practically scare you out of a treestand...8^)... They'll nest as early February and why they're vocal during those calm cold late wintery nights, same time as red fox squalling looking for a mate... Can be erie sound out there in late winter... Great Horned owls do not build nests, rather take over abandon hawk, crows, eagles, etc nests...
Beautiful pics John. I noticed in some pics that their eyes are dilatated quite diiferently from each other. Anybody know why?
Chuck I noticed that too. It is the same bird. The dilated eye would have been more shaded as the sun was low in the west and that eye was on opposite side. Not sure if that was the cause or if it is just that way. The second birds eye is not that way and was facing similar angle.
I'll add the first picture was the last I took at least out the ones I posted. I had moved around to his west side so sun is directly behind me. So bird was facing sun and dilation had not changed. It was looking that way a short period though when I took. You can see he is different shaded due to how the camera picked up sun light reflecting off him. (The golden hour)
I hand raised a nest of GHOs.We mounted the nest on a tree with a rolling base (the nest and owlettes were from a fallen tree and they were very young) which we took to the schools (as with other rescues in the past).
Man they grow fast and can perch on the edge of the nest and crap 20 feet!
I've heard their primary prey is skunks.
Fantastic pics John.
Awesome birds too. We have a couple barred owls around occasionally. Ive never seen a horned before.
You might want to be careful though. The first couple pics they are giving you the stank eye mean mug get the eff outta here look! You might end up on their watch list ;)
Thanks for sharing pic's ....
Great Horned. We had a double blue spruce that was 55' tall and very dense. A pair nested there every year and always raised 2 or 3 chicks. Then the tree blue down (core rot) two years ago. They had started nesting someplace close.
This winter bird flu got them and a big rough legged hawk plus a blue heron.
They owls are common in the area and I think we have another pair. I'll know once they get flight able since they move into and old barn which is fabulous to protect the chicks.
Original pair were very tame and we miss them.
Great pictures. I have at least four different kids of owls in my woods. The horned owns, screech owls and barred owls are the ones I see most. Another is smaller than a screech owl and I think it is called a saw whet? Not sure of the spelling but they are tiny.
When a kid, raised a couple Screech owlets, they're different species than Saw-whets, pictured on the left... Notice the little horns on the Screech, Saw-whets haven't any... Screech owls very in color phases, red/brown and grey... Grey phase photo'd on right... The red phase I raised looks similar to a miniature Great Horned owl...
Zbone, I had pet screech owls and barred owls for pets when I was younger. The barred owl was really special and very friendly. We would be outside in the yard and he would follow me around. He loved to catch cicadas and eat them. They hunt very well even in daylight. If I walked to the woods he would follow. I shot birds for him and he liked that. Don't clean the birds, the owl would pick off some feather and eat just bout every thing. Later he would spit out in a ball of what didn't digest. I also had a pet crow. He would take an empty strawberry basket to the top of the outside cellar door and get in it and slide down the door. He was like a kid on a sliding board.
Love owl pics John! They have always been my favorite to see/hear/watch when in the woods. I've got a pair in my woods and I see them often.
Shuteye, had a pet crow as a kid too, had him so long he'd even reply his name "Frightful"...8^) They used to have a caged one at Tappan Lake Park that'd say "Hotdog"...8^) And no you didn't have to split their tongues to have them talk...
Was a nature freak as a kid (still am) and had all kinds of wild critters growing up, hawks, kestrels, those 2 Screech owlets, a crow, foxes, coons, couple baby groundhogs, flying squirrels, turtles, tadpoles to frogs, salamanders and about every bug I could find in a jar one time or another...8^) Even raised a fawn once...
My grandpa even brought me home a couple baby Caiman (crocodilian) from their Florida vacation once... Don't know where or how he got them, I was just a little shaffer, but now assume probably a pet store or maybe one of those roadside exotic places down there back then... I guess they actually came from South America, this was back in the 1960's, hard to tell where he got them, but unfortunately only had them a couple months before I put a couple crawdads in the container, and believe it or not the crawdads killed them... Actually, the crawdads killed one and the other survived a few days before drying of its wounds... Had the 2 Caimans , 2 big crawdads and a frog in the container, and I know it wasn't the frog... Isn't that funny ya remember things like that as a kid... To this day I don't know was species they were, but assume the common Caimans from South America...
Have a another funny story about my coonhound catching a mother opossum on the ground one summer and having a surviving baby raised by a school chum...
I can remember one summer at my grandma's, my uncle had raised a nest full of baby crows... All 4 of them survived, and boy were they characters... My grandma would take a broom after them to shoo them off the porch and they would caw and tease her... I can still see her there shaking broom in hand at they 10 feet away... Ah, the good old days...8^) Those 4 crows were something else... Later that summer, my uncle was getting married at the church and they had a planned outdoor reception at the house and my older cousin didn't have to go to the church wedding and got to stay home to keep the crows out of the food... I was so envious...8^)
It was different 50 plus years ago, now days requires some kind of permit to harbor a wild animal...
Zbone, i have had many wild animals as pets. Had several coons. One coon was named Judy and she would ride on my German Shepherd's back. She liked to lay on the kitchen floor on her back and could drink a grape Nehi soda out of the bottle. I would drink half of it first. One day mom thought my German Shepherd had killed Judy. I went outside and Judy was fine but a boar coon from the wood had come up and the 'German Shepherd killed it. Judy would still ride on his back.
Burrowing owl in my pasture. Crappy picture. They are cool as hell
Burrowing owl in my pasture. Crappy picture. They are cool as hell
I didn't even notice bird on right until reading two birds. That is some camo.
Walking through the woods after dark, and a screech owl calls out will startle the you know what outa you!
Mpdh, I took my young son fox hunting at night, in the woods. I told him not to be scared if barred owls came in. I started calling and barred owls came and started making the scariest sounds you can imagine. My son told me that if I hadn't warned him he would have been gone.
They can hide. This guy was sitting on the top of a wind-topped tree, like an extension of the tree trunk. I never would have seen him if I hadn't seen him land there.
Saw this guy on a recent hunt
Hunter do you know how rare it is to see one standing horizontal like that? ;)
Update on neighborhood owls and owlets. Found the owlets out of next first time today.
This one is interesting from a week or two ago. I was near the nest and the adult owl landed about 100 yards away. Laid its wing out and acted injury to try and draw me away from nest.
Nest circled in Red
Nest circled in Red
Posted the owlets pic's Tuesday. Wednesday a big storm blew through just walked down to them found the nest and the tree they were in on the ground. No sign of the owls don't know if they're survive or not.
Where tree broke
Where tree broke
John, all I can say is you take some awesome photos. Thanks for sharing them
They like skunks and cats too.Hell on my penned pheasant.
I love Owls. They can be hard on the chickens, ducks and rabbits....but I love seein' 'em.
Not a great picture, but a cool sighting.
I risked getting really close and he never flew.
What kind of owl is that?
Looks like a juvenile Saw-whet Owl...
Got it off the web:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Saw-whet_Owl
I also think it's a juvenile Saw-whet. I'm not even sure if he was able to fly. I kept expecting him to bolt and I walked up to about 6 feet and he never moved.
I love owls and especially owlets. I was out yesterday looking for the burrowing owlets to see if they were out of their burrows yet and ended up seeing a few but too many weeds in the way most of the time. Sadly as I was glassing one just outside of its burrow as male northerner harrier swooped down and took it away.
I forgot to mention I just started this thread for BB to have a place to post his owl pictures;)
Nice photos Bill! Come around more often!
