Last month a barn owl screamed, flew by, and landed on a tree in downtown Davis. Last week in Sacramento, I saw the two barn owls living in Shelby and Seth's palm tree.
Before these three barn owls, I'd only seen two previously - a snowy in Wyckoff NJ in 1991 and a Burrowing in Argentina in 2006.
THEN, driving through Davis last week, an owl flew by and landed on a tree. Almost crashing, I quickly parked and gawked at the adult owl perched in the tree. As it flew away, I heard screaching noises in the same tree. Looking further, I found four young owls ripping apart the rodent its parent had just delivered. Quite incredible - a family of Barn Owls living in downtown Davis.
This is not my photo, but it sure looks like the family of Davis owls:
When we returned from the Eastern Sierras, Andrew and I had dinner at a restaurant just under the owl family. We watched the parents fly in with breakfast for the owl-lets, while we had dinner. Quite an experience.
I hear that you can build a nest box to attract nesting Barn Owls. This seems like a great idea.
5 comments:
You know, I just realized that I don't think I've ever seen an owl outside of captivity. Cool! You should totally get your own pet owls with a nest box.
Cool beans!
I think the only time I've seen an owl for extended time (i.e., more than a fly-by) was in SW Virginia while at the biological field station. One of the ornithologists working there found a nest with two owlets and took me to see it. The owlets were so cute! And huge (for baby birds anyway). They would slowly close one eye at a time. Mostly just saw them through binoculars but it was way cool!
I remember your snowy owl experience like it was yesterday! You were a graphics assistant at the Wyckoff News when someone called about a snowy owl on a telephone pole. You grabbed the camera and flew out the door to return with some great shots of that fabulous visitor. So exciting! Of course, the paper ran the photo.
do you think owls would scare away other birds from our yard? otherwise, i'm game!
The snowy owl appeared in Wyckoff in February - just after Yumiko got her license, but before I did. We paid Miks to be my taxi-driver to get me to the Snowy owl - very funny!
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