I posted this last night but see that today’s thread is up before I leave for the day with a friend, so I’ll repost it here. 🙂
For the last five weeks I have been watching a nest of great horned owls. Someone told me about it when I was walking a different part of the trail and I went looking for it. The nest is visible from the trail and over time more and more people have learned about it, so in the evenings (when they get active and when the parent eventually flies to the nest) there are sometimes 10-12 people there, many of us the same people over and over.
Two owlets have been in the nest. Owls don’t build their own nests; they claim one from last year before hawks start nesting, and what hawk is going to argue with their choice? And the babies tend to leave the nest before they can fly, sometimes by a method calling “branching,” which means walking out of the nest and walking around the branches, maybe gliding from one to another.
They also sometimes get too close to the edge, and maybe a bit too rambunctious in flapping their wings, and they fall out of the nest. But birds are lighter than mammals and aerodynamic, so they are likely to survive the fall. And God gave them strong talons and good balance, and so they walk around the forest floor until they find a leaning tree and they climb it. This process happened last night and today for one of the owlets. I saw (and heard) it fall with sticks from the nest in its talons; apparently the debris caught onto trees on the way down, since it fell in stages, falling a few feet and then a few more feet until it went all the 50-60 feet to the ground. Someone observing said he saw it on the ground and saw it pop its head up. It was dark enough I couldn’t see much and needed to get home, so I left.
This morning it was on two branches that came together maybe eight feet off the ground to form an inverted V. I drove to the park several times today (it’s just a mile from my home, so I went before and after Bible study and later for a walk with my husband) and tonight I went to watch and photograph. The owlet had moved, and it was a while before anyone saw it, but it was higher up a leaning tree.
Toward dusk one or two people saw it fly “a meter or two,” and it ended up on exactly the same place where it spent most of the day today, so it must have liked that location. I saw the parent go to the nest, but didn’t see it go to the juvenile–it probably waited till after dark to avoid alerting us to its presence if we hadn’t seen it. 🙂
I’ve seen a few owls through the years, even great horned owls occasionally, but I’ve never seen an owl nest. (I did see juvenile screech owls with their mother once, but not in a nest.) It has been really thrilling to watch, and fun to get photos.
Wandering Views 
I posted this last night but see that today’s thread is up before I leave for the day with a friend, so I’ll repost it here. 🙂
For the last five weeks I have been watching a nest of great horned owls. Someone told me about it when I was walking a different part of the trail and I went looking for it. The nest is visible from the trail and over time more and more people have learned about it, so in the evenings (when they get active and when the parent eventually flies to the nest) there are sometimes 10-12 people there, many of us the same people over and over.
Two owlets have been in the nest. Owls don’t build their own nests; they claim one from last year before hawks start nesting, and what hawk is going to argue with their choice? And the babies tend to leave the nest before they can fly, sometimes by a method calling “branching,” which means walking out of the nest and walking around the branches, maybe gliding from one to another.
They also sometimes get too close to the edge, and maybe a bit too rambunctious in flapping their wings, and they fall out of the nest. But birds are lighter than mammals and aerodynamic, so they are likely to survive the fall. And God gave them strong talons and good balance, and so they walk around the forest floor until they find a leaning tree and they climb it. This process happened last night and today for one of the owlets. I saw (and heard) it fall with sticks from the nest in its talons; apparently the debris caught onto trees on the way down, since it fell in stages, falling a few feet and then a few more feet until it went all the 50-60 feet to the ground. Someone observing said he saw it on the ground and saw it pop its head up. It was dark enough I couldn’t see much and needed to get home, so I left.
This morning it was on two branches that came together maybe eight feet off the ground to form an inverted V. I drove to the park several times today (it’s just a mile from my home, so I went before and after Bible study and later for a walk with my husband) and tonight I went to watch and photograph. The owlet had moved, and it was a while before anyone saw it, but it was higher up a leaning tree.
Toward dusk one or two people saw it fly “a meter or two,” and it ended up on exactly the same place where it spent most of the day today, so it must have liked that location. I saw the parent go to the nest, but didn’t see it go to the juvenile–it probably waited till after dark to avoid alerting us to its presence if we hadn’t seen it. 🙂
I’ve seen a few owls through the years, even great horned owls occasionally, but I’ve never seen an owl nest. (I did see juvenile screech owls with their mother once, but not in a nest.) It has been really thrilling to watch, and fun to get photos.
LikeLike