March 8, 2014
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Barred Owl
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This morning I had my first close encounter with a Barred Owl. It spent all morning resting on a broken branch of one of the red pines in our front yard. I took a number of photos of it through the window because I assumed (incorrectly) that it would fly away if I went out. An hour or so later, my husband and I ventured out and found we could get quite close to it, if we didn't make much noise. It seemed to be resting there, taking small glances once in a while at the chickadees, woodpeckers and blue jays flitting around the peanut feeder, then closing its eyes again. I took many more photos there, including this one.
Later on we thought it had flown away, only to find it was completely hidden by its background. The second shot kind of shows you the idea. The open eyes are really the only giveaway, from a little further back.
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doing a little grooming, you can see how long
the feathers are here |
Links:
a great owl website
more information on Wikipedia
...by the way, we haven't seen our resident red squirrel today.......maybe he's hiding....
