Owl Hunting

Based upon a Facebook post of a friend, we had a tip about the general location of a barred owl’s nest fairly close to our house.  Sometime in the first week of May, we went there at dusk and my camera immediately ran out of batteries, because if was the one time I did not check them first.  We did not see any owls, but we did see a turkey roosting in a tree and a raccoon.  

We did not make it back until the evening of 05/13 and 05/14 a little before sunset.  The first night, we walked around and were richly rewarded.  Mostly we saw the one adult barred owl.

It wasn’t until the very end that we saw the other adult and the juvenile. These two practically flew over our heads.  They were quiet but we sensed the air movement or something, so we barely got to the see them fly and land. 

We went back the next night an hour or so before sunset and we saw one of the adults and the juvenile.  We didn’t walk around much.  Once we spotted one owl, we stayed in that location and they did two.  Both started out fairly deep in the forest, too deep and obstructed to take a decent picture, but the juvenile kept flying out closer to us.  It also was constantly chirping or vocalizing.  We figures that we weren’t stressing it, since we stayed in one spot and it kept getting closer to us. 

When it landed on a tree in the open, it became even more rewarding to watch.  The juvenile owl started playing with some dead leaves hanging from the branch below it. 

I took a number of pictures of the owl playing with the leaves.  Many of them turned out blurry.  I almost never take videos with my camera, because I just don’t think about it but this time I did!