Wednesday 16 April 2014

Hearing a Great Horned Owl

I catch myself in repose and my face has a look of permanent anxiety, I think it is my father's look.  I have to remind myself sometimes to smile and try to look less sombre.  Perhaps I'm wearing this face today because I woke early at about 5:10 a.m. (ah, the accuracy that digital clocks allow) to the sound of an owl hooting.  This is the second time in the last while this has happened to me.  He called till about 7 and I was awake and listening to his every hoot.  I had the sound well learned by then and was able to easily identify it at allaboutbirds.org/  All About Birds one of my favourite bird sites.  It was a Great Horned Owl I was hearing, only wish I could have seen him. I just read an interesting fact... he is the only natural predator of the skunk; having no sense of smell means the skunk's main defense is useless against an owl. I also found out that I was probably hearing two owls; they enjoy calling to each other in the night at this time of year.
Today I went out looking all over the property tramping as far as our land borders in one direction.  I kept looking at all the many dying trees with likely looking holes and cracks but did not see an owl.  I saw this robin roaming back and forth over the little space no longer snow covered, looking for worms, I suppose.



How I wish I had a photo of an owl to show you.  However, I did enjoy my walk and with all the bird activity and no new leaves yet, it is a great little window of opportunity to catch sight of who knows what.
Rex enjoyed a stick he found uncovered and I have to include him because his nose is out of joint about only Murphy making into the blog last week.




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